INTRODUCTION TO TAJWID Salam alaikum wa rahmatu Allahi wa BarakatuHu. Peace be upon the followers of guidance.

Tajwid is the knowledge passed on to us by our righteous predecessors, on the correct pronunciation of the Holy Quran. One learns to correct one's accent and pronunciation, until it is consistant with our predecessor scholars, shuyukh, and imams, going all the way back to prophet Muhammed, may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him. One changes ones 'self' pronunciation to this noble recitation.

A student of tajwid would first need to humble himself and not be arrogant to learn this noble knowledge, and then recite to his teacher, until no mistakes are made. A good student would grow to love this knowledge and his teachers as time goes on, and would become very much devoted to it.

The student must humble and lower himself to learn this beneficial knowledge. This way this noble knowledge will be absorbed by the student, otherwise the 'nafs' (soul) would remain in its old flawed self without improvement. The 'nafs' changes from its old deficient self, to a new 'nafs' enlightened with the knowledge of our noble predecessor ulema.

It is essential that the student recite with his shaikh. Mistakes in recitation are not noticed by one reciting alone. The student will have to learn where the mistakes are in his recitation, and rid himself of them.

At this time there are 10 mutawaatir (recognized) ways of recitation. Some of the ulema (scholars) say 7, some more or less. The most popular recitation is "Hafs", the one that we will be covering here. All these forms of recitation are correct, and we must respect the different paths of knowledge being taught by our ulema, and not fall into disputation. We should all continue on these noble paths of our ulema, and dismiss any innovations or new pronunciations, for they will go astray.

We must seek and pray to Allah to help us in this endeavour to learn this beneficial knowledge of recitation. Allah is the One to be asked, and Controller of everything, there is no diety except Him, He has no partners, and is perfect in every manner.