Cohorts and hours
Small enough that you will be asked to read.
A cohort is a group who start together, meet live every week, and finish together. It is deliberately small, because the only thing that makes this work is a teacher hearing each student say the letter out loud.
Adults and children are in separate cohorts — different hours, different pacing, and different teaching. An adult who was never taught should not be learning beside nine-year-olds.
The shape of it
What "live and recorded" means here, precisely.
The live hour
Online, once a week, at a fixed time. A short piece of new material, then students reading aloud one at a time while the rest follow. Attendance is the point of paying — it is the only part a recording cannot replace.
The recording
Every session is recorded and yours for as long as you are enrolled. It is there for the week you are travelling, the week the baby is up all night, and the week you simply did not get it the first time.
The week in between
Fifteen minutes a day out loud beats two hours on a Saturday, and that is not a motivational line — it is how the mouth learns a new sound. Between sessions you practise, and you bring what broke.
Why the cohort is kept small
If a class is large enough that you can hide in it, it is too large to teach reading in. The number is set by how many people can each read out loud in an hour and still be corrected properly — not by how many seats we would like to sell.
Why you start together and finish together
Adults learning to read do better beside other adults learning to read, which is the same reason children are taught apart from them. Rolling enrolment quietly turns every session into a beginner's session for one person and a repeat for everyone else, so we do not do it.
The schedule
One cohort, forming.
This table is the whole truth about what is scheduled right now. When dates and hours are set, they appear here first — before any announcement, and before anyone is asked for money.
Cohort OneAdults · reading, from the letters
- Starts
- Not set — see below
- Meets
- Not set — see below
- Size
- Small by design, capped before it fills
- Tuition
- $50 a month · sponsored seats available
- Then
- Tajwīd and Juz ʿAmma memorisation follow the reading track
PrivateOne to one · any track
- Starts
- Whenever a seat is free
- Meets
- A standing 45 minutes weekly, at an hour agreed with you
- Size
- Three students at a time. That is the real number, not a scarcity line
- Tuition
- $320 a month · $90 for a single session
The hours are genuinely undecided, and that is on purpose. Students are spread across American time zones and the teacher is currently based in Morocco, so there is one hour a week that either works for a nurse in Atlanta and a father in Los Angeles, or does not. Picking it before knowing who is coming would be guessing.
So the waitlist below is not a mailing list. It is the actual input: tell us when you could genuinely make a class, and the hour gets set from the answers.
The waitlist
Tell us when you could actually be there.
Tick every window that would genuinely work — not the ones you would like to work. It opens your own email app so you can see exactly what is being sent, and nothing is submitted to anyone else.
What being on the waitlist commits you to
Nothing. No card, no deposit, no place held against your name. When an hour is set you get told, and you decide then.
If the hour that gets chosen does not work for you, say so — that is a useful answer too, and it is how the second cohort gets its time.
Two people from the same house
If a spouse, a sibling or a parent wants to join with you, put it in the box. Learning beside someone who will keep you honest during the week is worth more than anything on this page.
Or reach us directly
- Email hamza@inheritingislam.com
- Phone (470) 404-0648
Before you ask
The six questions everybody asks.
Is it online, or do I have to be somewhere?
Online. The live session is a video call, so a cohort can hold a student in Atlanta, one in Memphis and one in Las Vegas at the same time. If a masjid wants to gather people in one room and join together, that works too — that is what hosting a cohort is.
What do I need to have?
A phone, tablet or computer with a working microphone, and somewhere you can read out loud without feeling watched. That is the real requirement — you will be speaking, not typing.
You will also want a qāʿidah, and there are several editions. We will tell you which one to get rather than sell you one.
What happens if I miss a week?
You watch the recording, and you are not behind. Missing several in a row is a different matter — not because of a rule, but because reading is a physical skill and it goes quiet without use. If life gets in the way, tell us and we will work something out rather than quietly let you drift.
Can my children join?
Yes — in a children's cohort, which is run separately from the adults' with its own hours and its own pacing. It is not the same class with younger people in it.
Children's cohorts form the same way the adult ones do, so put it on the waitlist below and say how old they are.
How long before I can read?
We are not going to give you a number, and you should be careful with anyone who does. It depends on where you start, how often you practise out loud, and whether Arabic script is completely new to your eye.
What we will tell you honestly, in the first ten minutes of a call, is whether the distance in front of you is a few months or a year — after hearing you read.
Can I be taught one to one instead?
Yes, and there are three private seats at a time — $320 a month for a standing weekly session, or $90 for a single one.
It is the same teacher, the same syllabus and the same correction as the fifty-dollar cohort. What you are paying for is an hour that cannot be given to anyone else, and if a cohort would serve you just as well we will tell you so rather than take the difference. The reasoning, in full.
Do I pay for the whole thing up front?
No. Fifty dollars a month, per student, while you are enrolled. No enrolment fee, no term contract, and no upsell waiting three lessons in. Stop whenever you need to and start again when you can.
What if I cannot afford fifty dollars?
Then say so, and you will be taught anyway. There are sponsored seats, reduced rates, and masajid who cover students from their own community.
There is a box on the form for exactly this so that nobody has to write a paragraph explaining their finances to a stranger. Tick it and it comes up on the call.