Jawed Anwar

What should a Muslim child learn first? What comes after that? And how should parents decide between schools, madrasahs, homeschooling, and the flood of modern subjects competing for a child’s time?

These are not small questions. They decide the kind of people our children become, the kind of community we leave behind, and whether the greatest blessing Allah gave this Ummah remains living knowledge or becomes a wrapped book on a high shelf.

This article brings together from my two video presentations at AsSeerah YouTube Channel on the priorities of education. The aim is practical: once the meaning, order, and purpose of education become clear, choosing a path for our children becomes easier.

https://youtu.be/dg7arj-xxzg

https://youtu.be/6easlwDdBwQ

Why Priorities Matter

In earlier discussions, AsSeerah explained what education truly is. The next step is more urgent: what comes first.

A family can spend years, money, and energy on schooling and still miss the very purpose of learning. That happens when subjects are collected without an order of importance. Islam does not treat all knowledge as equal. Some knowledge saves a person. Some knowledge serves that saving knowledge. Some knowledge is useful. Some knowledge, if it becomes the center of life, can quietly replace guidance with confusion.

The Qur’an itself gives the order.

Surah Ar-Rahman: The Divine Order of Education

In Surah Ar-Rahman, Allah begins with His great name, Ar-Rahman—the Most Merciful—and then lists His greatest favors upon humanity:

The Most Merciful.
Taught the Qur’an.
Created man.
And taught him eloquence.
(Qur’an 55:1–4)

Look carefully at the sequence.

Allah mentions the teaching of the Qur’an before the creation of man. Then, after creating man, He mentions al-bayan: speech, expression, the ability to communicate clearly.

These four verses have, in a lasting way, fixed the priorities of our education.

The knowledge of the Qur’an is not one subject among many. It is presented as a mercy even greater than human existence itself. After that comes the gift that makes a human being able to receive, understand, and transmit meaning: language.

The knowledge of the Qur’an reached Prophet Muhammad ﷺ through Jibreel (peace be upon him), then the Companions, then the whole Ummah. Yet many of us have abandoned that knowledge in practice. The mushaf is honored, covered, placed high, and recited without understanding. Recitation continues, but connection with knowledge and action has grown weak. That break is one of the deepest reasons for our present weakness.

Allah also made this knowledge easy and approachable:

And We have certainly made the Qur’an easy for remembrance. So is there any who will remember?
(Qur’an 54:17)

The Qur’an is not meant to remain distant. It was made easy for dhikr: to be remembered, understood, taken to heart, and lived.

What “Tilawah” Really Means

A common confusion must be removed first. Qira’ah and tilawah are not the same thing.

Qira’ah can mean reciting the words. A person may recite without understanding. Tilawah is deeper.

Imam Ibn al-Qayyim (may Allah have mercy on him) explained that the right of tilawah is not fulfilled until five things are present:

1. Correct and beautiful recitation, with proper tajweed.
2. Understanding the meaning.
3. Reflection on its wisdom and implications.
4. Action upon its teachings.
5. Conveying it to others: teaching, inviting, and spreading its message.

Until these five are together, the right of tilawah remains incomplete.

This is why it is reported that some of the noble Companions took years to complete the tilawah of Surah al-Baqarah. They were not merely finishing pages. They were absorbing, practicing, and living the surah.

So the first educational duty of Muslim parents is not a slogan. It is this: teach children the Qur’an in this complete sense. Illuminate them with its knowledge. Adorn them with it. Fulfill the right of the blessing that Allah mentioned even before He mentioned the creation of man.

Quranic knowledge includes:

• tajweed
• qira’at
• hifz
• nahw (grammar)
• sarf (morphology)
• lughah (vocabulary and language)
• tafsir

If a student cannot memorize the entire Qur’an, he or she should still memorize what is possible and continue with the other Quranic sciences. Hifz is a great honor, but it is not the only door into the Book of Allah.

The Twelve Priorities of Education

From Surah Ar-Rahman and the rest of the Qur’an, a clear ladder of priorities appears.

1. Knowledge of the Qur’an

This is first. Everything else is measured against it.

The Qur’an is not only a book to be recited at events or in Ramadan. It is the foundation of a Muslim’s mind, character, law, worship, family life, and public life. If this foundation is weak, later degrees and skills cannot replace it.

2. Knowledge of the Bearer of the Qur’an: Sunnah and Seerah

To understand the Book, one must know the one who received it and taught it.

Just as We have sent among you a messenger from yourselves, reciting to you Our verses and purifying you and teaching you the Book and wisdom and teaching you that which you did not know.
(Qur’an 2:151)

The Messenger ﷺ did not only deliver words. He recited, purified, taught the Book, taught wisdom, and taught what people did not previously know. Sunnah and Seerah are therefore not extra-curricular Islamic studies. They are the living explanation of the Qur’an.

Without the Prophet ﷺ, people can read the same verses and still lose the method, the balance, and the example.

3. Knowledge of the Arabic Language

The Qur’an was revealed in Arabic so that it may be understood:

Indeed, We have sent it down as an Arabic Qur’an so that you may understand.
(Qur’an 12:2)

Arabic is not a heritage hobby. It is the window of revealed knowledge. A child who never approaches Arabic remains dependent on fragments, translations, and second-hand explanations. That may be a starting point for adults, but it should not be the ceiling for the next generation.

4. Knowledge of Expression and Communication

This is the fourth verse of Surah Ar-Rahman: al-bayan.

Language is not only Arabic. A child also needs the mother tongue, the national and regional languages of the land, and real communication skill: speaking, writing, listening, and explaining.

We are a da‘wah Ummah. No prophet is coming after Muhammad ﷺ. The prophetic responsibility of conveying the message now rests on the Ummah and on our children. That is why mastery of language and expression comes immediately after the sciences of revelation.

In Canada, English and French matter. In the United States, English and Spanish matter. For many non-Arab Muslims, Persian and Urdu also carry a large part of our intellectual and historical heritage. Those languages should not be discarded.

Childhood is the easiest time to learn more than one language. Waiting until later usually means losing that window.

A wise educator once summarized a powerful path:

• Teach a child Arabic thoroughly, so the window of religious/deeni knowledge opens.
• Teach English thoroughly, so the window of worldly knowledge opens.
• Teach mathematics thoroughly, so the knots of the mind loosen.
• Build a reading habit.

Then, he said, that child will not fall behind at any later stage.

5. Knowledge of Science: The Open Book of the Universe

Allah sent down one Book of revelation and spread before us one Book of the universe. From the open book of creation, a person can recognize the Creator.

Prophet Ibrahim (peace be upon him) is the great example. Before later revelation in his story reaches its peak, Allah shows him the kingdom of the heavens and the earth so that he may become certain. He observes a star, then the moon, then the sun. Each rises and sets. Each fails as an object of worship. From that study of the universe, he turns fully to the Originator of the heavens and the earth.

And this is how We showed Abraham the kingdom of the heavens and the earth so that he would be among those who have sure faith.
(Qur’an 6:75)

Science, in this sense, is not a rival to iman. Rightly studied, it is a path to recognizing Allah. The problem begins when the study of nature is cut off from the One who created nature.

6. Knowledge of Mathematics

Math is needed in worship and in worldly life: times of prayer, the calendar, months and years, zakah and ‘ushr, inheritance, measurement, planning, and almost every later science.

Without mathematics, many doors remain closed. Both din and dunya need it. That is why the advice mentioned above placed math beside Arabic and English as a core discipline of the mind.

7. Knowledge of History

The Qur’an does not treat history as entertainment. It tells the stories of nations so that later people may take heed: the people of Nuh, ‘Ad, Thamud, Lut, Shu‘ayb, Musa and Pharaoh, Banu Isra’il, the kingdom of Sulaiman, and others.

History also includes what happened after the first generations of Islam: how some nations distorted the religion, how new claims and new religions appeared, and how Muslim societies rose and declined.

A sound education therefore needs both world history and Islamic history. Without history, a community repeats old mistakes and calls them new ideas.

8. Knowledge of Geography

The Qur’an speaks of the earth, seas, rivers, mountains, lands, seasons, water, the heavens, and the system of the universe. Muslim travelers and scholars once used this Qur’anic attention to the world and produced remarkable travel writing and geographic knowledge.

Today, sadly, the same Ummah that once led in these fields often lags behind. Geography is not a minor school subject. It trains a person to understand the earth as a trust, a sign, and a field of responsibility.

9. The Social Sciences, Studied in the Light of Revelation

After the foundations come political science, sociology, economics, psychology, and related fields.

These subjects matter because they describe human life in society. But they must not be swallowed whole from systems that deny revelation. They should be studied in the light of Qur’anic commands and teachings. Otherwise a student may gain technical vocabulary and lose the moral center that tells him what a human being is for.

10. Knowledge of Technology

Allah taught Adam (peace be upon him) the names of all things:

And He taught Adam the names of all things, then presented them to the angels and said, “Tell Me the names of these, if you are truthful.”
(Qur’an 2:31)

Guidance-knowledge continued through the prophets and their followers. But material knowledge and technology were opened more broadly to humankind. Being Muslim is not a condition for discovering a tool or a process. This kind of knowledge responds to time, effort, resources, and collective will.

When Allah gave Dawud and Sulaiman (peace be upon them) authority, He also gave them extraordinary technical capacity: the fashioning of armor, molten copper, vast structures, and means of power placed in their service. The lesson is not that every nation will receive miracles. The lesson is that power, craft, and technology are part of the trust of leadership.

Muslim societies and Islamic states cannot afford to remain consumers of every critical technology. Mastery of useful modern technology is part of communal responsibility.

11. Governance, Administration, and Business Management

One of the great aims of the Shariah is human freedom in its true sense: that a person should not live as a slave of other human beings, systems, or desires, but as a servant of Allah alone. Servitude to Allah is the only freedom that does not end in a new form of bondage.

To protect that freedom, Muslims need competence in political affairs, governance, military and administrative matters, and economic independence. Business management belongs here because lawful enterprise is one of the strongest means of remaining economically free.

The story of Yusuf (peace be upon him) is a clear example. Allah established him in the land, taught him knowledge, and later granted him authority. When that authority came, Yusuf thanked Allah for both the power and the knowledge that made it possible.

Similar gifts of knowledge and judgment were given to Dawud and Sulaiman (peace be upon them). Leadership in Islam is not only sincerity. It is sincerity joined to capability.

12. Knowledge of Modern Jahiliyyah

To understand light, a person must also recognize darkness. Things are known by their opposites. Day is understood more clearly when night is known.

For that reason, Muslim education cannot ignore the ideologies that shape the modern world. The lecture named several of them as forms of modern ignorance and modern rebellion: Zionism, liberalism, secularism, nationalism, capitalism, socialism, feminism, humanism, liberal democracy, and the sexual ideology associated with LGBT movements.

The point is not that a child should be drowned in polemic. The point is that a generation unable to recognize the ideas around it will absorb those ideas without noticing. Islam cannot be understood in a vacuum while the air itself is full of rival definitions of God, family, freedom, morality, nation, and the human being.

A Practical Path for Families

Theory becomes useful only when it changes household decisions.

For families in Ontario and other Canadian provinces, AsSeerah’s editor’s choice is a demanding but serious combination:

• a full-time madrasah that gives strong education in Islamic sciences
• a homeschooling setup for academic subjects

In the Greater Toronto Area, some madrasahs are already working in this direction.

Homeschooling does not mean every parent must personally teach every subject. It means parents take responsibility. They can:

• form parent groups
• pool different kinds of expertise
• hire teachers, in person or online
• design a program around the child’s needs instead of surrendering the whole formation of the child to an institution

If every masjid and every madrasah accepted a share of this responsibility, a major problem of the community could begin to lift.

When a flood comes, people flee to higher ground. If those already on higher ground refuse to open their homes, the people below will not be saved. In the same way, to protect children from the flood of moral and , social and intellectual evils, the masajid must open their doors in a real way: with education, support, structure, and courage. People of other faiths already started organizing themselves around their convictions. Muslims cannot afford to be less serious about their own.

What This Framework Protects

This order of education protects three things at once.

First, it protects Iman. The child does not meet the modern world with an empty center.

Second, it protects competence. Arabic, language, math, science, history, technology, and administration are not dismissed. They are placed in their proper rank.

Third, it protects mission. The Ummah is not only a community that wants safe careers for its children. It is a community entrusted with a message after the final Prophet ﷺ.

When education is reversed—when careers come first, identity comes second, and the Qur’an is left as a weekend ornament—the result is predictable: technically trained people with little light, or religiously sentimental people with little capability. Islam asks for both light and capability.

A Closing Word for Parents

The greatest educational decision is not which brand of school sounds impressive. It is this: will my child grow up knowing the Book of Allah as knowledge, understanding, reflection, action, and message? Will he or she know the Prophet ﷺ who taught that Book? Will the child’s tongue, mind, and skills be trained as servants of that guidance?

If those questions are answered well, school choice becomes clearer. If they are ignored, even expensive schooling can produce a polished form of loss.

Teach the Qur’an first, in the full sense of tilawah.
Open the window of Arabic.
Open the window of the languages of the age.
Train the mind with mathematics.
Build a reading habit.
Then add science, history, geography, society, technology, leadership, and a clear understanding of modern ignorance.

That is not a small curriculum. It is a complete one. And it is closer to the order Allah Himself set in Surah Ar-Rahman than the scattered education many Muslim families have inherited by accident.

May Allah make us people of the Qur’an in recitation, understanding, action, and conveyance, and may He make our children better than us in knowledge, character, and service to this Ummah.

Peace and mercy of Allah be upon you.

This article is compiled from two AsSeerah Channel presentations by Jawed Anwar on the priorities of education in the Islamic education system. He can be reached at jawed@seerahwest.com

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