Four years. Seven years. Eight years part-time. Three providers, three answers and not one of them explains why. That’s where most people start. You have decided to study seriously, you have six tabs open and every one is a prospectus written by the institute selling it. This article sets out how to choose an online Alimiyyah programme using evidence you can actually get hold of before you pay a deposit anywhere.
Full disclosure before the checklist: this site runs one. The nine checks still work if you take them somewhere else and a few of them are questions we get asked most often.
Quick Answer at a Glance
| Check | What to ask | Why it decides things |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Teacher | Who teaches your year, by name | Assistants often teach early years |
| 2. Tradition | Which scholarly stream the syllabus comes from | Shapes what you believe in four years |
| 3. Live or recorded | And what happens the night you miss | Recorded-only kills completion |
| 4. Contact hours | Hours per week, not years advertised | 7 years at 15 hrs beats 4 at 3 or does not |
| 5. Named texts | The reading list, not the subject list | Shows progression or its absence |
| 6. Arabic entry | What you read in month one | “No Arabic needed” means two different things |
| 7. Assessment | Ijazah, certificate or accredited degree | These are not the same thing |
| 8. Full cost | Per term or per year, what is excluded | UK online fees run roughly £575 to £1,150 |
| 9. Falling behind | Mentor, deferral policy, catch-up | Year 2 is where people stop |
Why This Is Harder Than It Looks
An Alimiyyah is not a course. It’s a four to eight year commitment to a particular scholarly tradition, taught by particular people, in a language most applicants can’t yet read.
Prospectuses all use the same vocabulary. Classical texts. Qualified ulama. Traditional syllabus. Those words describe programmes that differ enormously in what you sit through on a Wednesday evening.
Two applicants can enrol on paper-identical programmes and have completely different experiences. One gets live teaching with the shaykh three times a week and an answer to a question within the hour. The other gets a recording dropped into a portal on Friday and a forum nobody moderates.
The Nine Checks
Work through all nine before you pay a deposit anywhere.
1. Who Teaches Your Year
Ask for the name of the person teaching the year you would enter. Not the name of the institute’s founder.
Large academies rotate teaching assistants through the early years and reserve the senior scholar for advanced cohorts or for promotional video. That’s not dishonest. It’s worth knowing.
Then ask the harder question: what is the route from your confusion to an answer? A live class where you can ask is one answer. A weekly office hour is another. A ticket with a five-day turnaround is a third and it is the one that quietly ends most students’ study, because a question you cannot ask on Wednesday is a lesson you have not grasped by Friday.
2. Which Tradition the Syllabus Comes From
The most skipped question and it decides what you will hold as creed in four years. Most UK programmes follow the Dars-e-Nizami curriculum inherited through the Indian subcontinent. Others follow an Azhari syllabus. A smaller number teach from the Madinah University syllabus, with texts selected accordingly: Usool Thalathah, Kitab at-Tawheed, Nawaqid al-Islam, Lum’atul I’tiqad.
None of that is a ranking. It is a disclosure. Aqeedah, usul al-fiqh and the treatment of madhhab all shift depending on the stream you enter and year three is a painful time to discover the programme’s position is not yours.
Ask plainly: which tradition is this drawn from and which aqeedah texts are taught in Year 1? A programme that cannot answer that in one sentence is not one to give four years to. You can see how an Alimiyyah curriculum states it openly, year by year and text by text.
3. Live, Recorded or Both
Recorded lectures are cheaper to produce and cheaper to sell. They are also where completion rates go to die. Three formats exist. Fully live, at a fixed time. Fully recorded, at your own pace. Hybrid, live with recordings for anyone who misses.
Hybrid is the sensible default. The detail sits in the recording policy. Some providers keep recordings for seven days. Others for the length of a module. A few do not record at all. If your evenings are unpredictable, a seven-day window is a different product from permanent access so ask rather than assume.
4. Count Contact Hours, Not Years
“Seven-year programme” sounds more serious than “four-year programme”. Often it is not.
Do the arithmetic nobody prints:
- A five-nights-a-week programme at three hours a night is fifteen hours weekly. Seven years of that assumes you are not working.
- A one-full-day-a-week programme concentrates everything into a single block, which suits some people and destroys others.
- A three-evenings-a-week programme at one hour each is three hours weekly plus self-study. Lighter, longer per topic, survivable alongside a job.
Neither shape is better in the abstract. What matters is whether the weekly load is one you can sustain for the whole duration. A programme you leave in year two teaches you nothing.
5. Ask for the Named Texts
“Fiqh, Hadith, Tafseer, Arabic” tells you nothing. Every programme lists those. Ask for the reading list instead: which text in Year 1, which commentary, which year each is studied. A programme confident in its syllabus sends it without hesitation. If what comes back is still a list of subjects, that is your answer.
What you are looking for is progression. Does the hadith track move from a primer through terminology into Sahih Bukhari itself? Does the creed track build from a short text into a full commentary? Or is it four years of unconnected modules?
One more question while you are there: does the programme complete the Qur’an in translation and tafseer or sample it? Completion is rarer than you would expect.
6. Where the Arabic Actually Starts
Two claims get made and they are not the same. “No prior Arabic required” should mean the programme teaches the language from the alphabet, inside the timetable, with Year 1 texts pitched accordingly. “Arabic proficiency expected” means you are reading unvowelled classical prose in term one.
Both are legitimate. Enrolling in the second while you need the first is how people lose a year and a deposit. Ask what you will be reading in month one and whether it will be vowelled. That answer tells you more than any entry-requirements page.
7. What You Are Assessed On
There is a difference between an ijazah, a certificate of completion and an accredited qualification. Providers blur it constantly. An ijazah is a traditional authorisation from a teacher to transmit a text. It carries weight within the scholarly tradition and none at a university admissions office. An accredited degree is validated by an external body. A certificate of completion is a PDF and a record of four years of attendance.
Ask about assessment too. Some programmes run mid-year and end-of-year examinations with a fixed weighting. Use written work, oral assessment and research projects. Some do not examine at all, which is fine if you study for yourself and a problem if you want evidence you learned something.
Decide what you are studying for before you weigh this. If serving your community is the goal, the teacher’s standing matters more than a validation stamp.
8. The Real Annual Cost
Published UK fees for online Alimiyyah study run from roughly £575 to £1,150 a year. That is a twofold spread across programmes that describe themselves the same way. Ask four things. Is the figure per term or per year? Does paying annually reduce it? Are books, exam fees and platform access included? What happens to the fee if you defer a year?
Then ask whether there is a way out. At least one large academy offers a full refund inside the first four weeks and scholarships where fees are unaffordable. A provider willing to return your money in week four is telling you something about its retention. One that is not may still be excellent, though you carry the risk.
Current figures for this programme sit on the current fees and payment options page rather than here, because fees change while articles do not.
9. What Happens When You Fall Behind
Everybody falls behind. A new baby, a job change, a bad winter. Year two of any Alimiyyah has attrition and honest providers will say so.
What differs is the catch-up machinery. Is there a mentor assigned by name? Can you repeat a year without repaying for it? Is there a deferral policy in writing? Does anyone notice you have stopped attending and does anyone call?
A programme with a named mentor and a written deferral policy has thought about the student who struggles. One with neither has designed for the student who does not and that student is rarer than the brochure suggests.
Red Flags Worth Walking Away From
- No named teacher for the year you would enter
- No published reading list, only subject headings
- “Accredited” with no named accrediting body
- Fees quoted per term in large type and per year in small type
- No trial period, no refund window, no deferral policy
- A syllabus described as traditional with no tradition named
- Testimonials with no names, no cohorts, no dates
One of these on its own proves little. Three together is a pattern.
How This Programme Answers the Nine
Applied to our own programme, plainly so you can compare like for like.
Shaykh Suhaib Sirajudin teaches the live sessions himself. The syllabus is drawn from the Madinah University curriculum, with the Year 1 to Year 4 texts named openly on the curriculum page. Classes run live on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings for one hour each, with recordings available for anyone who misses. Four years, age thirteen upwards, no previous Arabic required, because Quranic Arabic and Arabic Grammar are taught subjects from Year 1. The full Qur’an is completed in translation and tafseer in Year 3. A certificate is awarded on successful completion. Fees are £200 per term or £575 for the academic year, paid in full.
Before committing anything, two of the teaching resources are free and open: the complete Qur’an Tafseer in English, ninety-eight video lessons and eleven audio lessons from Sahih al-Bukhari. Watch a few. You will learn more about whether a teacher suits you from forty minutes of tafseer than from any prospectus, ours included.
The 2026-2027 academic year begins on Wednesday 30 September 2026 and applications are open.
About the Teacher
Shaykh Suhaib Sirajudin graduated from the Faculty of the Qur’an and Hadith and completed his Fazeelat in Islamic Sciences, then specialised in Hadith and Islamic Law under scholars in the UK and abroad. He has taught for more than fifteen years, to over a thousand students across more than twenty countries and has written nineteen published works including Akhsaru Tafseer. Read more about Shaykh Suhaib Sirajudin.
Frequently Asked Questions
Between four and eight years depending on weekly hours. Four-year programmes typically run around three hours a week with self-study between sessions.
Published fees currently run from about £575 to £1,150 per academic year. Check whether the figure quoted is per term or per year, whether paying annually reduces it and whether books and examination fees are included. This programme is £200 per term, which is £600 across the year or £575 paid annually.
Yes, provided the programme teaches Arabic from the beginning inside its timetable rather than assuming it. Confirm what you will be reading in month one and whether the text will be vowelled. “No prior Arabic required” is used by providers that mean quite different things and the gap between them costs a year.
It depends what you need it recognised for. An ijazah carries weight within the scholarly tradition. Academic accreditation is a separate question with a separate answer and any provider claiming accreditation should be able to name the accrediting body immediately. Decide which of the two matters for your purpose before comparing programmes on it.
For live, small-cohort teaching where you can ask questions during the session, outcomes are close to in-person. For pre-recorded libraries with no live contact, completion falls sharply. The live versus recorded distinction matters far more than the online versus in-person one, though it gets discussed far less.
Before You Enrol
Nine checks. Knowing how to choose an online Alimiyyah programme comes down to getting most of them answered in one email to each provider on your shortlist, then noticing which replies arrive quickly and plainly.
If a Madinah-based syllabus, live evening teaching and a four-year route match what you want, the Online Alimiyyah Programme page carries the timetable, the fees and the application. If it does not match, take the nine checks elsewhere and use them. A programme you finish somewhere else is worth more than one you abandon here.
Have Questions Before You Begin?
If you have any questions or need further clarification before enrolling, feel free to reach out to us directly: