The Easiest Way to Master Tajweed

Tajweed is something that you learn in kindergarten, so many dismiss it as unimportant. If you walk into a Masjid before times for prayer you normally see two types of people. One would sit and read the Quran out loud confidently. Another group of people would sit down like they are in a library, almost as if they are ashamed to read it out loud.  I belong to the latter. 

Simply because I am ashamed that I don’t know Tajweed. Not knowing Tajweed is a chip on my shoulder. I refused to lead the prayer countless times because I just do not know whether my recitation is correct or not. 

The Importance of Tajweed

A person may dress elegantly, walk with style, and be admired from afar. As soon as he opens his mouth and talks to you, you’ll immediately form an impression about their entire existence. That is Tajweed! The thing is, Tajweed gets harder to learn with age. Especially if you are a grown-up middle-aged man. It is something that you should have mastered a long time ago. Shame, guilt, and all sorts of disempowering emotion is associated with Tajweed from a social standpoint. 

Most likely you are already reading the Quran correctly but because you did not study Tajweed, but you just did not know it systematically. This deficiency of knowledge reflects in your confidence with it comes to representing Islam.  

What is Tajweed

I am not going to go into what isTajweed others have covered it a zillionth time. Suffice to say that improper Tajweed makes you unfit to lead a prayer, and everything you say about Islam will not carry any weight. So let’s dive in. How many tajweed rules are there? It ranges from 7 to 70 depending on who you talk to and what their agenda is. Tajweed is a branch of knowledge that has to do with the Quran. When you learn your religion you don’t take from people who are pushing their courses down your throat.  

You take it from the expert and one of the experts is Shaykh Sulaiman Al Jamzuri who composed a beautiful poem about Tuhfatul Athfaal on the rules of Tajweed. There are only 8 sections explaining all the rules of tajweed and the poem can be read in just under 9 minutes.  

Why Tajweed is so hard to master

In this day and age, there are people in their 40s 50s 60s still studying tajweed. It is just the nature of the subject. Tajweed is practical knowledge. It is very much like riding a bicycle, it takes a lot of practice.

It is not enough to know the rules, you need to habituated its application. This is the hard part. Lets, face it the Quran is not something that every Muslim reads every day.  Knowing the rules of Tajweed is to avoid making mistakes in reading the Quran, it is reading the Quran eloquently. It will not make you sound like Shaykh Mishary but it will definitely, stop people from thinking that you lack the basic prerequisite as a Muslim. That is with proper Tajweed.

Why should you care about what people think? You don’t but in the Hadith of our beloved prophet, it is mentioned that the best of you are those who learn the Quran and teach it to others. So to teach it to others you must not only know what you are talking about but sounds like someone who knows what he is talking about. 

This respect is needed in order for people to be receptive to what you have to say, InsyaAllah, from next week, I will cover the lessons that I learn from Ustaz Suhaib Webb Institute of Sacred Sciences (SWISS).  It is based on the book mentioned above, it is the simplest and easiest way to learn Tajweed. 

For now, just watch the video, you will be tempted to memorize the poem it’s up to you, but we are going to go over it so many times that it will get drilled into your mind.