Aya & Sura Flashcards

Helping people learn Arabic and the Holy Quran through Aya & Sura

For the past few months, I have been involved in designing multiple high-quality decks of 54+ cards of flashcards to help anyone who uses it in learning Arabic from the Holy Quran. Each card uses illustrations featuring characters from our popular comic, Muslim Manga Club.

Go to AyaSura.com and use coupon “onmuslimmanga2022“ to get a special 20% discount for readers of this article. First 100 people. This works on the Surah Edition, the Quran Edition of the Aya & Sura Flashcards and the sticker sets.

The Background

I started working on this project because I noticed that there were a few realized there was a lack of high quality Islamic educational material for Muslim children. (Muslim reverts and second generation Muslims in western countries may find these quite beneficial as well.)

The deck includes 48 vocabulary cards, 2 grammar cards, 4 additional cards to help with supplemental material. Among those, we will provide an audio version of the words to help with using these cards as a learning tool, game, or as both. If you’d like to know where the characters Aya and Sura come from, you can check out this article on where the Muslim Manga Club characters came from.

The Vocabulary

For the Aya & Sura flashcards, we researched a few Quranic textbooks and cross-checked these with how they are used in the Quran, comparing different writing styles and formats as well. We ultimately used the Uthman Taha style, as it is pretty standard worldwide and the most accurate for learning correct pronunciation.

‘For the Quran edition, we compiled a list of vocabulary that can help get a general understanding of the Quran, while for the Surah Edition volume 1, the cards included will help learners completely understand from the heart 3 Surahs of the Quran: Surah Al-Ikhlas, Surah Al-Fatiha, and Surah Al-Asr. This deck also includes a bonus random Aya or Sura sticker!

Arabic side

The Arabic side of the cards features a classic blackboard from the series Muslim Manga Club. This is a small detail, but this black board is used in every episode, specifically on the webtoons platform, where we have 39,567 subscribers on this series (as of January 26th 2022). It has been a unique part of the title page that would get updated as new characters were introduced, and the fans noticed. Given, the board developed into a special thing that our fans would look for whenever there was a new character introduced; we thought it would be cool to pay homage to that and include that as part of our flashcard designs. Many people who are new to the world of Muslim Manga might not notice, but it was a detail we kept.

On the Arabic side, we include the word written in Arabic, along with a transliteration of the word, for those who can’t read Arabic letters, as well as a unique verse from the Holy Quran featuring this

English side

On the English side, we have one unique illustration per card that will help with the understanding of the word. This side also includes the full English verse or English verse segment with no blanks. We can find the Surah name and number of that verse in the bottom right corner. In the left corner, there is a unique code for that card that can identify it when looking for online content that corresponds to it.

Transliteration

Along with the vocabulary in English and Arabic, we include a transliteration of the Arabic word. The cards use transliteration style that we have developed ourselves. We noticed that in many existing transliterations, a single English letter may be used for multiple Arabic sounds. So, we developed a style where one Arabic sound has one equivalent in our style. For example, the “a” in Apple and the “a” in father are two different sounds. We mark these differently in our transliterations. We include a quick start guide in the decks that shows how to read the transliteration.

Online content

To go along with these cards, we have created a website that hosts online recordings, game explanations, as well as more in-depth grammar explanation.
This content can be accessed by scanning the QR code present on the QR cards. A lot of time and effort has been put into these so make sure to take advantage of them. We currently have two voices for the recordings and will try to add more in the future as well.

What the QR website looks like on mobile devices

The Future:

I am trying to expand into various other areas, so I will try to continue the line of Aya & Sura flashcards that we have, but I am also working on a Children’s Book right now. I am also working towards some animated projects. If you would like to support more creative projects like these, consider buying a deck of Aya & Sura flashcards, donating to Muslim Manga or becoming a patron of our works. Giving up one cup of coffee every once can help make an impact.

We can’t do this without you. If you like what we do and what we continue to work on, there are many ways to support us. If you are not sure yet, here is an article on why Muslims should invest in Muslim-focused content.

Thank you for all your support.
Hamed