Darul Uloom literally means ‘House/Place of Knowledge’.
The term is synonymous with aalim courses as these houses of knowledge are used specifically for this purpose and possibly Hifz classes as well.
The bigger Darul Ulooms also have sleeping/boarding facilities. This means that the student spends his entire day, every day, in the much needed Islamic environment.
This in itself is a great benefit to becoming an alim.
Starting an alim course without the proper environment will not be conducive to achieving the benefits of Ilm.
In such an environment, students can help each other and help is always at hand when needed. It brings solidarity and brotherhood amongst the students and this is the backbone of the Islamic scholarly way of life.
If you can’t attend a full time aalim course at a darul uloom, you can always take a part time alim course with one of the smaller institutions.
I will recommend one to you at a later date.
Here’s a video I chose just to illustrate the benefits of classical aalim course education in a Darul Uloom.
There is a great draw to taking an alim course online.
In fact, more people search for this than any other method of becoming an aalim.
The question is, how can anyone even fathom becoming an alim online?
My view is, it’s practically impossible to become a full alim with any course on the net.
It just wont work! For starters, alim courses last from between 5 years to a period of up to 8 years depending on what’s included. The normal period is 6 years.
In addition, you need student-teacher interaction to be able to receive that spiritual enlightenment whilst learning. Although this point seems small, it’s actually one of the biggest, but unless you’re spiritually inclined, you won’t understand the importance of this.
Trust me on this point. You need to have a teacher in front of you to become a good alim. There’s no way you can learn the arabic language, complete the rules of fiqh, learn volumes of fiqh and hadith and learn the quranic translation along with scholarly opinions if you don’t have a teacher in front of you.
Furthermore, you can ask questions and receive answers in a way that you wouldn’t be able to do online.
An alim course online may serve part of a full alim class but definitely not all of it. You may be able to do the beginning parts such as learning basic arabic (Sarf and Nahwa) but I don’t see it progressing past the third year, if that.
No, you definitely need to be with a teacher, even if you do it part time, like I do.
Even missing a single lesson with the benefits of a teacher is a great catastrophe to a true student of Ilm.
Imam Abu Yusuf (student of Imam Abu Hanifa RA) purposely missed the funeral of a member of his family (his son, I think), because he was in the middle of a dars (lesson/class) at that time. The dars was more important to him than the burial of a family member.
So if you’re looking to becoming an alim online, you should know that you wont be taking an alim course as such. It’s better to call it an Islamic course. It just can’t be classified as an alim course which our ulama take 6 years to complete normally.
The normal aalim courses taken in Darul Uloom’s around the world follow the Nizami Silsila which is a specific type of syllabus. This syllabus cannot be taken online, not even if you had mic, speakers and video.
Instead of taking an alim course online, re-think your strategy and consider the darul uloom I have recommended in my topmost post and in the sidebar.
If you feel differently to the statements above, please leave your comments below.
This is intended to serve the needs of fellow students looking to take-up studies with an approved aalim course or even a part time alim course.
Inshallah, I will be posting information which will benefit everyone concerned and hopefully, you will be able to make an informed decision by the time I have finished writing my experiences and recommendations.
I will be using the term ‘alim’ and ‘aalim’. They mean the same thing but are spelt differently.
