Make space for faith. Make space for reading. Make space for your child.
Mawadda Space is an online school with two kinds of rooms, both taught by one teacher,
Besim Bruncaj.
One is large. A global gathering where Muslim children from everywhere read together, once a week, all year.
One is small. Six children, and the kind of attention that only fits in a room that size.
This term both are Grammar-stan, open to 2nd–8th graders.
One course at a time. That's the whole school.
That's the point.
A note from the teacher.
I've spent years writing and designing Islamic readers — Swords & Butterflies, the McGuffey-style ones you may have seen — and wondering what it would be like to sit with children and read them together. To hear which parts stick. To notice when a shy child tries a word out loud.
Mawadda Space is that. Not a platform with a faculty — a school where one person writes the books, teaches the lessons, and remembers the children. Some weeks that is six of them around one table. Some weeks it is children in a dozen countries turning to the same page at the same hour. Both are the idea.
The word we chose.
1. A deep, nurturing love — rooted in mercy, sincerity, and the kind of care that we endeavor to plant into the hearts of children.
2. The committed kind of affectionate care; the kind that remembers a child's every question and shows that he cares. (This word appears twice in the Qur'an).
see also: the name of this space.
Two ways to learn with us
Sultan Grammar is entering the Divan!
An engaging — and dare we say fun! — narrative English grammar course set in Ottoman times where the parts of speech are characters and the lessons stretch beyond grammar to etymology, akhlaq, deen, scholarship, history, geography, Ottoman culture, science, calligraphy, and more. Witnessed and written by a 15th-century mekteb student with a stream of engaging comments and insights by Ustadh Besim from the future!
Say goodbye to those soulless corporate
textbooks and say Merhaba to soulful Islamic
English Language Arts … Swords & Butterflies style!
Open to 2nd through 8th grade — it is a story before it is a grammar book, so it reaches each age differently. What that looks like, grade by grade, is set out below.
Live Sessions:
Saturdays · 7pm Istanbul / Mecca (12pm EST) — every family
Wednesdays · 6:30pm Istanbul / Mecca (11:30am EST · 8:30am PST) — the class of six
← I think that student was really Besim the entire time
Muslim children from everywhere in one room, once a week, all year round. No cap on seats and no waiting list — Cairo, Kuala Lumpur, Toronto and Manchester on the same page at the same hour.
One child, two, three, four — and Mom and Dad too, if they would like to sit in. This is a family class: $19 covers your household, not each child.
Year round · cancel whenever you like
Everything in the Global Gathering, and then a second session midweek with only five other children — small enough that Besim knows what each child found hard last week, and plans the next lesson around it.
Besim and six children, twice a week — every child reads aloud, asks questions, answers questions, and learns the material inside out, insha'Allah.
Wednesdays · 6:30pm Istanbul / Mecca
(11:30am EST · 8:30am PST)
Tuition rises to $175 a month for families joining after Sept 15.
this semester
x 4 months
===============
$184 total saved
Listening in. They take the morals and the religious teaching from the story, and pick up bits of the grammar, history and geography here and there.
The heart of it. This is the main target group — the children the course was written for, who benefit the most in every regard.
A second chance at it. The quirky stories keep them engaged, while the lessons engage their learning. This genuinely new approach to integrative learning may unlock a love for grammar, deen, language, history, and geography that isn’t there yet.
Coming soon, insha'Allah
Rhythm, rhyme, and remembrance. A weekly circle open to all families at $29 a month starting Sept 15 — plus an optional class of 6 that meets two additional times each week.
The groundwork beneath the readers. Phonemic awareness, decoding, fluency — one sound at a time, with short sacred stories woven in.
Reading and writing where every text is drawn from the shamāʾil — the beautiful character of the Prophet ﷺ. Children learn to read something worth reading.
Do you want to register your own co-op or have some other unique concern?
DM me on Telegram (link below), and let's see how we can help.
Why Grammar-stan?
A child spends years inside whatever book you hand him. A dull one teaches him more than grammar: it teaches him that learning is something to endure, that language is a set of traps, and that the sacred lives in some other room, away from his schoolwork.
A living book teaches the opposite. He learns the same parts of speech, but he learns them laughing, inside a world where Islamic learning and Ottoman culture hold court and, most importantly, a boy four centuries ago gradually falls in love with grammar alongside your child. He finishes with his grammar sound and his fitra intact, and with the quiet sense that his deen and his lessons were never two different things.
Grammar-stan is still in editing. There may be a rough edge here and there, and that is the point: what these six children find challenging, I will edit, with plenty of individual time to work with your child. Notes from parents like you will shape the edition that goes to print.
Your child gets the personalized attention while you get to help positively shape what the ummah's children learn English grammar from.
A look inside the book.
Spreads from Grammar-stan, as they stand in editing.
these pages will change
What educators have said.
What teachers, principals, and scholars have said about Besim’s series of books.
The defter: six lines.
This page is about the small room. A teacher can actively engage with a few. Not thirty, not a hundred. When the lines are full, the class is full.
PICTURE THE space of 6 children:
just six children, and one of them yours.
How to enroll your child.
Need time to think, discuss, and pray istikhara? Masha'Allah, that's the way of baraka.
Tell me you're thinking it over, and ask anything along the way.
Want to see excerpts? No problem. Just DM us.
developed by Bulaq Press in Cairo over 100 years ago.