ARB301 - Madina Book 3

Alhamdulillah, as of now I am in the middle of semester 2 ARB301 - Madina Book 3, session 2 of Intensive Arabic Program with Islamic Online University founded by Sheikh Bilal Philips. 

Is this going to be a review on ARB301 - Madina Book 3? Nope..but this post deals with how I managed to deal with the challenges of learning ARB301 - Madina Book 3.

Another year Insha Allah, of four sessions with session 1 covering the balance of Madina Book 3 syllabus and the remaining three sessions will focus on Al-Ajroomiyah which honestly, I am very much curious to study.

Why? Because..

Al-Ājrūmīya (Arabic: الْآجُرُّومِيَّةِ) in full Al-Muqaddimah al-Ajurrumiyyah fi Mabadi’ Ilm al-Arabiyyah is a 13th-century book of Arabic grammar (نحو عربي naḥw ʿarabī). Written in verse for easy memorization, it formed the foundation of a beginner's education in Classical Arabic learning in Arab societies of the time and was one of the first books to be memorized after the Qur'an along with the Alfiya. It was written by the Moroccan Berber Abu 'Abd Allah Sidi Muhammad ibn Da'ud as-Sanhaji (aka "Ibn Ajarrum") (d. 1324) - Wikipedia. 

My late mother-in-law was a Moroccan Berber, hence I felt a tinge of pride to be connected to this book even though I know that this is totally unrelated. Heheh..

I am not going to lie. Learning Arabic is not easy. Period. The more I study, the more theoretical it becomes and I know that I am very very weak at memorising theories and those verbs...oh those verbs.

The more I study this program, the more I feel that I am going to fail big time and I feel very much overwhelmed just to keep up with the pace of the syllabus! 

However, many times when I went through a slump, I was pulled back with burning desire and excitement to discover what is the next gem that I could experience.

On the other hand, what helps a lot is that there is somewhat a scientific formulas, approach and logic to learning Arabic. It is definitely interesting to encounter this when indicated by the teachers. 

The best thing is, whenever I read Al-Qur'an and bump into the words or the grammar that I have learned in the past made me smile from ear to ear as if I just met my best friend! This is worth a mountain of gold, definitely. 

Subhanallah. It is amazing to be able to learn Arabic, to be able to study and receive words of wisdom from those who have put the efforts before you do. They are my senpai (Japanese) or my sunbae (Korean), whichever you may call them. May Allah preserve them. Ameen.

At times I did question myself the reason for putting myself on extreme stress. Time and again I thought that I was a little crazy to start this journey and you can imagine the abundance of information overflowing out from my little brain.

This is me when there is too much information to handle. :)

Recently, I was confused on the difference between اسم الفاعل and الفاعل. So I shot a question to my teacher and the answer just blown me away and this reminds me the reason why I took up Arabic in the first place. Masha Allah. Read till the end...

"Wa alaykum assalaam wa rahmatullahi wa barakaatuh, I am fine al-hamdulilah.

Thank you for your kind words and thank you for asking me! Regarding your question, yes there is a difference between اسم الفاعل and الفاعل.

اسم الفاعل is a noun formatted in the pattern فاعل such as كاتب ،خالق ، سارق derived from the verbs كَتَبَ ، خَلَق ، سَرَقَ to denote the one who does the action. So when we discuss اسم الفاعل we mean the formation or the pattern of the noun regardless the job in the sentence الوظيفة الإعرابية

Because اسم الفاعل could have different jobs . It could be مفعول به  قتلت الشرطة السارق

So السارق in its formation is اسم فاعل however its place in the sentence is مفعول به

On the other hand the فاعل as a job in the sentence could be noun, pronoun and even اسم مفعول Such as :
يدعو المظلوم على الظالم

المظلوم
اسم مفعول وإعرابه في الجملة فاعل مرفوع

I hope the point became clear and this is better than any mark you missed because you gained knowledge that benefits you in understanding the Quran during all life insha Allah."

That sentence...you gained knowledge that benefits you in understanding the Quran during all life.. made me realize that this knowledge is really worth to strive for.

It is not about keeping your grades, it is not about scoring high marks, it is definitely not about being the best student with the highest score BUT it is about gaining the knowledge that will help us to understand the Book of Allah and benefit from it during all life..in this world and the hereafter.

May Allah made it easy for me. Ameen.