Q. Why do you charge money for teaching Islam? Why do you need to charge so much?
A. The default without doubt is that Islamic knowledge is to be provided free. This is because no one owns this knowledge except Allah.
However it is permissible to charge for the value added services that goes along with knowledge, such as the book in which the knowledge is printed, or the cassette in which the talk is recorded and the service and effort that went into its production. It is for this reason why we find the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam who had forbidden a person from taking money for teaching the Quran, permitting his companions to take money for performing ruqyaa (quranic healing with recitation) on others. This was in order to teach us that the money was for the service provided and effort expended in delivery, not for the knowledge itself.
It is in the same way, that we intend that we are not charging for the knowledge itself, rather for the value added services that come along with it - such as the cost of maintaining the workers who run a world class institute that promises to have thousands of students, the cost of the professional venues, our IT infrastructure and IT personnel who manage it, travel and boarding costs for our instructors, marketing and publishing costs etc.. Charging for the courses allows us to be professional, not fund raise to maintain our costs, ensures that we have a longer lasting viable future, allows us to concentrate on teaching and improving our institute to become a world leader and pioneer in modern methods of delivering classical Islamic education.
Appart from this, one of the problems with living in such a materialistic society is that we only tend to pay attention to that which we have a financial commitment to. How many lectures and halaqas do you know of where people attended initially and then lost their interest because they had no commitment and so became care free? Also how many Islamic teachers that you know of who can't afford the time to teach or benefit the people to their full extent because they are busy working trying to make a living? Wouldn't it be better if they were provided a livelihood in a profession that entailed teaching the people so that the people benefitted?
Similarly, living in western countries, without the presence of a baytul-maal (Treasury) nor an Islamic government to provide funds for these lectures, it falls upon the people themselves to invest in their future and the future of their progeny and pay for courses like these.
AlKauthar is a non-profit venture so we aim to direct all profits back into beneficial community projects. The fee for our courses are optimized to be in tune with the costs of running the lectures and administration of the institute along with providing funds to expand and run other Islamic ventures.
In addition to all of this, we will never turn any student away due to financial reasons. It is because of this that we have trained our officers to work with our students and agree to a fee payment plan to help them pay for the courses. Please email
[email protected] if you want any help working out a payment plan.
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