Learn Islam in English, One to One and Free
You can learn Islam in English, one to one with a real teacher, for nothing. No fee, no subscription, and no commitment beyond the time you choose to give it.
This page is for new Muslims anywhere in the world who would rather be taught in English than work through material in a language they only half follow. It is also for anyone who took their shahadah recently and then found there was nobody obvious to ask the small questions to.
Why learning in your own language matters
Most new Muslims are handed material in a language they can manage but do not think in. It works for a while, and then it quietly stops working.
The problem is not vocabulary. It is that faith is learned through nuance, and nuance is the first thing that disappears in a second language. You can follow a lesson on prayer and still not be certain whether something was an obligation or a recommendation. You can read a translation of a verse and not feel any of it.
There is also the matter of asking. People will sit on a question for months rather than ask it badly in a language they are unsure of. And the questions people sit on are almost always the ones that matter: something about their family, their marriage, their past, or a doubt they are ashamed of having.
Being taught in the language you actually think in removes all of that at once.
Who teaches you
We collaborate with New Muslim Academy, an online academy built specifically for the period after the shahadah rather than for general Islamic study.
It is led by Sheikh Shareef El-Arbi, a dawah teacher and author who has taught new Muslims around the world for many years. He is a former university professor, and he works alongside a team of volunteer instructors rather than teaching alone. That matters, because it means you are matched with someone available rather than waiting for one person.
Their teaching follows the Qur’an and the authentic Sunnah, and their instructors have been doing this long enough to know which questions actually come up in the first year.
What you get, at no cost
Registration gives you access to all of the following.
- Video classes covering the foundations, structured in order and available whenever you have time. You are not tied to a fixed schedule.
- Live question and answer sessions and webinars, where you can hear the questions other new Muslims are asking, which is often as useful as asking your own.
- A community of new Muslims at the same stage as you. This is the part people underestimate. Knowing that somebody else also cannot yet remember the order of the prayer is worth a great deal.
- Qur’an classes, including private help with Surat al-Fatiha, which is the one you need first and the one people most want to get right.
- A private one-to-one session with a teacher, described below.
There is no paid tier. It is free in the ordinary sense of the word.
The one-to-one session
This is the part most people come for.
You get a private session with a teacher over Zoom. You choose the length: 20 minutes, 30 minutes, or a full hour, depending on how much you have to work through. Twenty minutes suits one specific question. An hour suits a person who has been storing things up.
You can ask anything. How to pray, and what to do when you get it wrong. Fiqh and the rulings behind everyday decisions. How to begin reading the Qur’an and where most people start. What to say to family. What is obligatory as opposed to recommended, which is the distinction almost nobody explains clearly at the beginning.
Nothing is treated as too basic. The teachers do this specifically for new Muslims, so the questions you are embarrassed by are the questions they hear every week.
How to join
Register for free access on the New Muslim Academy website. Once you are registered, you arrange your one-to-one session with a teacher directly through their platform.
You do not need to go through us, and you do not need to be in Malaysia. The academy serves new Muslims everywhere.
Questions people ask first
Do I have to be Muslim already?
The programme is designed for people who have taken their shahadah. If you are still deciding, nothing here is asked of you, and you are welcome to send us a question instead, anonymously if you prefer.
What if I converted somewhere else, years ago?
You are still welcome. Plenty of people arrive years later because they never got the foundations and have been quietly working around the gap.
Will I be pushed toward one school of thought?
The teaching follows the Qur’an and authentic Sunnah, and the focus is the essentials that every new Muslim needs rather than contested secondary matters.
What if my English is not perfect either?
Then it is still likely your strongest option, and the teachers are used to working across levels of fluency. Speak plainly and they will meet you where you are.
Is it really free?
Yes. There is no upsell at the end.
An honest note about this collaboration
New Muslim Academy is an independent organisation. It is not run by Wisdom Hub Academy, and we do not receive anything from sharing it.
We share it because language is one of the genuine barriers new Muslims face, and their team can teach in English at a depth and consistency we cannot always match ourselves. If anything about this arrangement changes, we will update this page rather than leave it standing.
If you happen to be in Kuala Lumpur, we also give a free Shahadah Kit and run classes in person, and everything else we offer new Muslims is on our support page.
