A 12-year-old Muslim boy from Charlotte, North Carolina, has completed the memorization of the entire Qur’an, becoming the second in the city to make this accomplishment.
“When I was little at around 5 years old, I started doing hifz with a female teacher and then after I got a little bit further, like at around chapter 1, that’s when we realized I had a talent,” Moshin Siddiqui told WFAE.org.
“Then my parents asked me if I wanted to take this forward and go full time … I thought it would be a fun experience, so I said yes.”
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Mohsin recently completed the memorization of all 6,200 verses and 77,000 words in the Qur’an. The process of hifz or memorization took four years.
It was the support of his mother Rukshana Patel which made the journey possible.
“She used to sit with me for hours and she used to listen to my chapters. She always had time for me whenever I needed her,” he said.
Imam Atif Chaudhry leads the hifz program at the Islamic Society of Greater Charlotte, where Mohsin studied.
Mohsin Siddiqui, 12, and his mother Rukshana Patel, in the musalla, or prayer room, of the Muslim Community Center of Charlotte. Queens University News Service
Memorization Program
Serving 25,000 Muslim population, Imam Atif leads a program where Muslim children from the age of 7 start the memorization process.
“In terms of memorizations, understanding, and in terms of propagating the messages of the Quran,” Chaudhry said, “since this is our core scripture, the core of our religion, it’s one of the resources of our moral and ethical religious spiritual values — our connection to it will be the strength of our community.”
Dania Akkad Hajjar, coordinator of the hifz program at Intellicor International Academy, a Muslim school in Charlotte, said memorizing the Quran could be difficult, but it is rewarding.
“First of all, it’s a great benefit for myself and the student, himself. We know that in our religion, we get a lot of rewards just from reciting the Quran,” Hajjar said.
“Our prophet said that each letter you memorize or read from the Quran, you will get 10 good deeds, and it wipes 10 bad deeds.”
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Rewarding
The Qur’an is a revelation from God, the Creator of the worlds, so He is the original author.
There is only one Qur’an which is in Arabic and many translations of the Qur’an in several languages.
There could be multiple translations by different authors in the same language such as English.
The Qur’an was revealed to Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) through the archangel Gabriel who used to make the Prophet memorize the Qur’an and made him revise it every year in the month of Ramadan, the fasting month.
Memorizing the Holy Qur’an is one of the most important ways to preserve Allah’s message.
The others are to publish and distribute the book, or the text on the Internet and to recite the parts that one knows to other people.