Posted by The horizons to seek education are expanding day by day. Allah Taala’s creation is an open book for seeking knowledge, we can’t deny the traditional method of reading to learn something to enhance our spectrum of knowledge. Seeking knowledge has a lofty status in all the revered religious books. This divine deed is compared with the worship of Allah. By reading and pondering into the ingenious creation of the creator, man subjugated the adversities he faced into his favour. Man discovered innumerable things which were hidden in the creation and unknown to him. He is always fascinated by the term “learning”. The reverence of the teaching profession is always incomparable with any other profession. Teaching is a notion that is always connected with the ebadat (worship).
What did people infer from the term teaching and learning before a few decades? It’s a physical congregation of teacher and one or more students. But nobody was aware that when the alphabet “e” will be added as a prefix to learning then the new term e-Learning will open the vast horizon for the learners. Few people immediately realized the potential the alphabet “e” is having and in real-time adopted the new norm of learning. Although, the obstacles people faced to adopt this new norm divided them into two categories; one who ignored these hurdles and worked towards adopting it, and others who barred themselves to adopt it. Not everybody was fully certain that this “e” will be encompassing all the areas of the human being. The term “e” will come like a storm. E-ticket, e-resource, e-commerce, and the list is very long.
Those who realized by their farsightedness that soon the learning mode will enter the new regime of expansion and will offer new possibilities, promptly directed their energies towards it. One of the trailblazers in this regard, whom I personally know is al Ustaz Janab Sk Murtaza bhai Qaari who adopted this new norm in the department of memorization of al Quran al Kareem. I remember that this all took place during the 1426 Hijri Ashara Mubaraka at Surat. This was the year when the foundation of this initiative was laid. As the head of the department, he was utterly convinced that this will give a new dimension for the aspirants who are not able to attend the hifz class physically. He diverted his energy in looking for the incumbent who can realize the requirements of this subject and compose the site accordingly. His selected competent individual was Sk Aliakber bhai Hakimuddin bhai Barwahawala. I still remember the people coming to Janab and mentioning the hindrances they are facing owing to the online classes. Few of them totally denied the idea of e-learning Quran classes. I myself was also having mixed reactions; the dilemma was, whether this idea will bring a large outcome as proposed? This was the time when the w-Fi with the largest bandwidth was also having limitations to assist you if your internet was slower than expected. Only a limited number of people were having the access to the internet.
The most fascinating thing here was although after apprehending the existing scenario, the head of the department was not ready to abstain from developing this thought of e-learning Quran site. On the contrary, the spirit was escalated by successfully combating the issues aroused every day during its development. The journey of the e-learning Quran site was leaping to new heights with the passage of every single hurdle.
Mode for conducting these classes:
These classes were conducted on the then audio/video applications available to us. Most common of all was “Skype”; the dynamics of this application rendered us with the required services to some extent. However, it was clear to the organizers that to enhance significantly the effect of the online classes from teachers and as well as from students end, we need to revamp a few features in this available application. And as this application was not designed by us these constraints were bound to persist. Hence came the thought of developing an audio/video application solely dedicated to our online classes which can effectively cater to our purpose. And after prolonged and repeated attempts an initiative was taken by the Mahad al Zahra KGs. Recently, after a period of one decade, an exclusive program is developed considering the necessity of the current trend. This audio/ video program is named “Gurfah Tahfeez”. The word ‘Gurfah’ denotes the room (hifz venue) and the terminology ‘Tahfeez’ refers to the collaboration of the teacher and student on a single platform to serve the purpose of memorization of al Quran al Kareem. Let’s talk about some of the intriguing features this program offers to the teachers as well as the students. It is a one-stop solution for both of them. You require opening a single-window where inside your account you can see the application directly connecting the teacher to the student and vice versa from their respective accounts. Here the teacher doesn’t require opening two programs simultaneously which means e-learning Quran teacher’s account for evaluation and separate account to conduct classes.
Here are a few vertical statistics related to the program.
Why the name “Gurfah” was chosen?
Mahad al Zahra imarat is built considering three salient points; Qaat (where a group of people can congregate), Gurfah( for one-to-one classes) & Hadiqat. (where students can relax in a solace environment ). The few earlier attempts for gurfah application were initiated during 1427-1428 Hijri. And the final product or I can say that the gist of all the efforts yields the fruits on the sacred occasion of urs Mubarak of Syedi Fakhruddin Shaheed RA 1443 Hijri. The very first class was conducted on this revered occasion. And within a short span of time, this application has developed a chat feature for student and teacher communication.
Currently, approximately 700 classes and all iktebaraat are conducted on this application with a remarkable amount of success rate. And seven tahfeez branches are availing the benefit of this application. We expect more alluring features of this application to come in the future. And may Allah give us the privilege to witness the august wish of our beloved Maula TUS accomplishing soon.