Interview as a data-elicitation method for this study

The most appropriate methodology for the purpose of this study was face to face interviews with my participants. Interviewing provides us the means not only to document the

knowledge/insights and attitudes of the interviewees but also to infer their cognitive system (psychological perspective). Interviewing people individually offered me the opportunity to investigate their beliefs about effective learning strategies to retain the text over the long term.

The interviews were semi-structured with a lot of open ended questions. Semi-structured interviews are flexible enough to allow the researcher to discover a variety of opinions and views and yet keep the focus on the research questions. There were occasions when the respondents replied to one of my questions and I followed up on what they said and asked more questions to dig deeper into relevant issues. I let them speak uninterruptedly; however, when required I directed them back to the issue under discussion. Questions were phrased in neutral words, trying not to lead them to a particular answer. Yes/no questions were largely avoided because the interviews were meant to elicit detailed accounts of the memorizers’ practices and experiences. Care was taken to put the questions in simple words. While some questions were short, others were a bit long as the concept had to be explained in advance of the question. Questions were put together by themes and were divided into the following five

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sections: (a) warm-up questions; (b) basic information about Quran memorization; (c) questions about mistakes during memorization and recall; (d) questions on memorizing strategies; (e) questions on the special features/characteristics of the text and memorizers (See appendix A for the interview schedule).

Special care was taken to avoid any face-threatening questions. Therefore several questions were asked indirectly, that is, questions were sometimes about what other memorizers did, or might do, rather than about the respondent’s own practices. This was done under the

assumption that participants might not be forthright in sharing their own experiences,

particularly in relation to making errors in the sacred text. Indirect questions can also give the participants an opportunity to distance themselves from the issues under discussion.

According to Codo (2008):

One technique for phrasing sensitive questions is to allow the interviewee to distance him- or herself from the themes discussed. Using formulae like “There are people who say/think that …,” “Do you know of anyone who…?” may be useful (p.168).

It was expected that by talking about the practices and experiences of others, interviewees would also bring their own perspective on the matter by relating it to their own practices. This, however, is not to say that direct questions were not asked. In fact, where it was judged feasible, direct versions of the questions were used.All the interviews were recorded with the participants’ permission using a digital voice recorder. It is important to note that the views shared by memorizers in the interviews are at best their personal opinions and might not even be what they really believed. The claims are therefore not necessarily representative of other memorizers.

As explained below, the interviews were conducted in Pashto and Urdu. Seven of the

informants had little or no English (four of the UK based could speak some English, none of the Pakistan-based ones could speak any). As I speak the languages of my participants and share the culture with them, I translated the interview data from Urdu and Pashto into English. Every effort was made to be as faithful to the ideas and the language of the

participants as possible. As the purpose was to report correctly rather than literally, concepts and meaning have been given priority over the wording. Having said that, it is neither

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This is, however, not to say that wording of the interviewees have been taken lightly or for granted.

5.1.3 Participants

I decided that participants, all of whom would be non-Arabic-speaking Quran memorizers, should speak a language that I knew myselfand be from a culture that I understood. Also, I wanted the participants to be able to speak in their mother tongue so that they could express themselves fully. Pashto which is my mother tongue was, therefore, selected for the purpose. Two informants, however, were native speakers of Urdu.

Urdu and Pashto are closely related, and educated Pashto speakers are familiar with Urdu. Both languages contain some Arabic borrowings in their vocabulary, either directly or via Persian, and such items could offer opportunities to affix meaning to words in the Quran. Table 5.1gives a simple illustration of how Arabic vocabulary features in Pashto and Urdu. Ten examples of frequent vocabulary that feature in the Quran are listed. The point is to show where a Quranic word might be understood from the L1—the word for book, for example, is cognate in Urdu but write is not and the Arabic word makaan has a slightly different meaning but is obviously related. Meanwhile, there are words in the Quranthat an Urdu or Pashto speaker would not recognise, such as rajul—man and wajada—to find.

87 English Classical Arabic Modern standard Arabic Urdu Pashto

book kitaab kitaab kitaab kitaab

to write kataba kataba likhtaa likal

place makaan makaan [makaan = house] kur

man rajul rajul mard saray

God Allah Allah Allah Allah

to say qala qala kehna wayal

faith eman eman eman eman

fear khauf khauf dar yara

to find wajada wajada milna muntal

prayer salah salah namaz monz

hereafter alakhira alakhira akhirat akhirat

sky sama’a sama’a asmaan asmaan

Table 5.1: Some examples of frequent vocabulary that feature in the Quran

Table 5.1 suggests that Pashto and Urdu speakers might have some opportunities for finding semantic hooks in the Classical Arabic text. The level of such potential was kept minimal by checking that informants had not studied Arabic. Although some had studied Arabic after the completed their Quran memorization (see below), none had done so before or during

memorization.

One of the most important challenges was to find appropriate participants. That is, people who could reflect on and articulate views about their memorization. As I was interested in knowing the processes involved in memorizing the Quran,Ilooked for participants who had not only memorized it but were also involved in training/teaching young memorizers. I believed that in a dual role of being a memorizer and a teacher, they would be in a better position to reflect on the processes and practices involved in memorization, compared to non- teacher memorizers.

Eight memorizers were interviewed for the main study and two memorizers for a pilot study. (A pilot study was conducted to determine the feasibility of the main study and to test and

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improve the quality of interview questions. See section 5.4 for results of the pilot). Provision had been made to interview more, but the responses were so similar that it was judged

unproductive to recruit more people. This gave me more time for the second part of the study (see chapter 7).

Five of the participants were sighted memorizers while three were blind. Since the research literature indicates that text memorization can benefit from visual reference to the written form, it was anticipated that this might also be an approach used by Quran memorizers. However, it is not at all uncommon for blind people to become Quran memorizers, so Quran memorization, clearly, is not always reliant on this technique.In order to gain some insight into this factor, it was, therefore, decided to interview some blind memorizers alongside the sighted ones.

Sighted memorizers were those who had normal eyesight: they could read the text without any visual aids other than, if necessary, prescription glasses, and had memorized the text by looking at the book; blind memorizers, on the other hand, had lost their vision in early childhood andthey confirmed they had not seen text in written form and had memorized the Quran by listening to their teachers.

All participants were adult male. Although women do memorize the Quran, I wanted to focus exclusively on men to avoid the variable of gender which could potentially confound the results.Moreover, given gender segregation in Muslim society, especially in religious circles and the protocols associated with it, gaining access to women memorizers would have been difficult. However, I believe that the broader processes involved in memorization could be applicable to women memorizers too.

As mentioned, all participants were non-Arabic speakers, that is, Arabic was not their mother-tongue. They did not speak Arabic at home, nor did they speak it in their daily lives. The contact with Arabic was the Classical Arabic they used for religious purposes: they recited the Quran on religious occasions (mostly during prayers). Two of the participants said that they interacted with Arabic speakers in their localities if situation so demanded. So, they were mainly speakers in the literal sense of reciters.

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The sighted participants were based in different mosques in Cardiff, Wales, UK. They were born in Pakistan and had completed their memorization of the Quran in their country of birth. As noted in the beginning of this section, my participants were also teachers of the Quran. An important benefit of interviewing teachers in the UK was that they had experience of teaching in two different countries and thus could give a broader picture of memorizing practices from Pakistani culture on the one hand and Pakistani Muslim culture in the UK on the other. The three blind memorizers were from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan and were interviewed there. Although I searched for Pashto/Urdu speaking blind memorizers in Cardiff, I could not find one. One of the sighted participants told me about a blind memorizer in London but he could not be contacted. I, therefore, went to Pakistan to interview the blind memorizers. I met every participant two times: (a) first, to introduce myself and my research and to discuss time and place for the interview; (b) second, to conduct the interview.

Early contacts with participants in Cardiff were made through a personal friend. A couple of meetings with a teacher-in-charge of one of the mosques in Cardiff led to contacts with more participants in other mosques in and around the city. In all cases the teacher-in-charge in the respective mosque was contacted first and the research interest was explained to him. The blind memorizers in Pakistan were approached through my personal contacts.

Three of the sighted memorizers were trained as scholars in Islamic Sharia and had studied Arabic as part of their training. According to them, however, their training in Arabic took place after they had completed the memorization of the Quran. The other two sighted and the three blind memorizers had not studied Arabic. Their use of Arabic was restricted to

performing religious duties, especially prayers.

All participants liked the idea of talking about their memorization and said that they had never talked about their memorization in this way before.

Although this study is concerned with the non-Arab speaking memorizers’ reflections and perspectives on the Quran memorization, I also had an informal chat with two native Arabic- speaking memorizers-teachers. The conversation with the native speakers was conducted in order to get a holistic picture of the processes believed to be involved in memorization, and not to conduct a comparative study on the differences and commonalities between the native and non-Arabic memorizers. As the native Arabic speakers are not my primary source of

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information, I will, therefore, refer to conversation with them only very briefly in the

discussion section of this chapter. A consent form (duly approved by the Ethics Committee of Cardiff University) was given to the participants to sign, saying that they agreed to my using the data for research purposes. The consent form was translated in Urdu and Pashto. Blind memorizers were read out the consent form and were told that they could leave the interview any time they wanted.