Your students already have access to Islamic content. What they need is a curriculum that builds on itself, fits together, and produces a graduate who actually understands what they believe.
The Problem
It starts with behavior, rules, halal and haram lists, and memorization without context and never arrives at the intellectual and spiritual foundation those behaviors are supposed to rest on. Students graduate from Sunday school without knowing how we know what we know. Without knowing what Sunni theology actually claims, or why. Without the tools to defend their own tradition when it gets challenged.
The solution is not more Islamic content. The solution is a different theory of what education is, one the classical tradition has had for fourteen centuries.
The word at the center of this curriculum is taʾdīb, not tarbiyah. Tarbiyah is nurturing. It applies to plants and animals. Taʾdīb is the formation of persons of adab: people who know where things belong and place themselves accordingly.
addabanī rabbī fa-aḥsana taʾdībī
The Prophet ﷺ said: My Lord educated me, and He made my education most excellent.
Taʾdīb instills adab: the recognition of the proper place of things in the order of creation, and the conduct that flows from that recognition. It produces not a student who knows more but a student who has been correctly placed. A student of adab does not need to be told to defend her tradition. She knows where she stands.
The Sequence
The FISLI sequence is a deliberate ordering of Islamic learning that mirrors how the tradition has always transmitted knowledge. The sequence is not a method; it is a principle of priority. Each discipline is placed where it is placed for reasons the tradition articulated before any modern curriculum designer named them.
I
The student must first understand what they are, a created and accountable being, before they can receive the Message with the weight it deserves.
II
The content of revelation, its claims, its demands, its mercy, must be established in the student's mind before any pedagogical method is introduced.
III
Only after the Message is received can the tools of mastery be applied toward excellence rather than mere performance.
Why Sīrah First
No other discipline is intelligible without the Prophetic Sīrah as its foundation.
The authority of the Qurʾān as divine speech depends on the prophethood of the one who received it. The prophethood is known through his life. A student who has not encountered the Prophet ﷺ as a historical person whose character is documented receives the theological and rational sciences as abstractions. Sīrah first is not a curriculum choice. It is an epistemological one.
Why Manṭiq Last
The word manṭiq derives from the root n-ṭ-q, meaning to speak, to articulate what the mind has grasped.
Logic is placed last because its function is retrospective. The student who studies Manṭiq after Sīrah, ʿAqīdah, Ḥadīth, and ʿUlūm al-Qurʾān discovers that she has been doing manṭiq all along and can now name and sharpen what she has been practicing.
The Curriculum
Our catalog is organized around the five disciplines at the heart of a sound Islamic education. Each discipline is sequenced for the FISLI framework and anchored in named sources through verified chains. Every unit in this curriculum is traceable to a named source through a verified chain. A claim that cannot be traced to a named source through a verified chain is not Islamic knowledge. It is rumor wearing the form of religion.
Qurʾānic anchor: 2:129, 62:2
Qurʾānic anchor: 2:129, 62:2
Prophetic Sīrah
Primary source: Ibn Hishām, Al-Sīrah al-Nabawiyyah
The life of the Prophet ﷺ as the living model of Islamic character, leadership, and mercy. Eight units. Eight phases of a life that transformed the world. Students meet the Prophet ﷺ before they study revelation. His character, his life, his example arrive before doctrine. That is the order the tradition always used.
Qurʾānic anchor: 112:1-4, 57:3
ʿAqīdah: Islamic Belief
Primary sources: Al-Sanūsī, Umm al-Barāhīn; Al-Nasafī, Al-ʿAqāʾid
What Muslims believe about Allah, the Prophets, and revelation, and the reasons behind it. Not a list to memorize. A coherent picture of Islamic belief that students can understand, explain, and build their lives around. Drawn from the established classical schools of Ahl al-Sunnah.
Qurʾānic anchor: 2:2, 15:9
ʿUlūm al-Qurʾān
Primary sources: Al-Suyūṭī, Al-Itqān; Al-Zarkashī, Al-Burhān
The sciences that govern how you approach the Qurʾān as a text. Most students who have memorized the Qurʾān have never studied it. This discipline changes that. It addresses how the Qurʾān was revealed, preserved, compiled, and read, and what its internal diversity of register and genre demands of the reader.
Qurʾānic anchor: 4:59, 59:7
Ḥadīth Sciences
Primary sources: Imām Mālik, Al-Muwaṭṭaʾ; Ibn Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-Ḥadīth
No civilization in human history built anything like the isnād system. Students who complete this sequence understand not just what the ḥadīth collections contain but why those collections deserve the authority they carry. The science of narration as epistemology.
Qurʾānic anchor: 38:29, 2:269, 67:10
Manṭiq: The Science of Correct Reasoning
Primary sources: Al-Akhḍarī, Al-Sullam al-Munawraq; Al-Abharī, Īsāghūjī
Allah commands afalā taʿqilūn (will you not reason) forty-nine times in His Book. The classical tradition built a science around that command. This curriculum restores it. The tool that makes every other discipline intelligible. Al-Ghazālī identified thirty valid syllogistic forms in the Qurʾān before any European logician named them.
Programs
Foundations Press curriculum is designed for two distinct educational contexts.
For Schools
Full-year and multi-year Islamic Studies and Arabic language curricula for Islamic schools, charter schools with Islamic Studies programs, and hifz academies. Includes scope and sequence, lesson plans, assessments, and teacher guides.
For Communities
A 56-week intellectual formation program for adult new Muslims from the shahāda to intellectual confidence. This program is designed for communities with adult new Muslims who have taken the shahada but need the full intellectual architecture behind what they believe. It does what no introductory program does: it takes the revert through the same five-discipline sequence the classical tradition always used.
Every graduate who completes the full arc is eligible to enter the mentor pathway. Graduates become mentors. Mentors become directors. Directors certify the next generation. Each level is a licensing event. The certification framework sustains the program's quality over time, and the community's investment in formation continues to compound. The tradition travels intact. Build once. License everywhere.
LICENSE THE CURRICULUM
Annual institutional license. Includes the complete five-discipline FISLI curriculum, teacher guides, and assessment instruments.
$2,500/year. Zakat-eligible. Founding partner pricing available.
Inquire About Licensing →Teacher Certification
FISLI teacher certification is a transmission standard. Three tiers protect the integrity of the material at the point of delivery. A curriculum with a formal teacher certification program governed by an Azharī scholarly board is categorically different from curriculum without one.
Tier 1
Entry level. Any qualified teacher. Enables teaching with FISLI materials. The adoption driver for institutional networks. Issued directly by The Foundations Press.
Tier 2
Substantive credential. Classical text examination. Scholarly review and approval by an Azharī scholar-reviewer. Issued by The Foundations Press scholarly board. The credential that carries institutional weight for accreditation review.
Tier 3
Elite credential. Trains and certifies other teachers. Holds Tier 2 certification in at least three disciplines. Azharī formation background. Approved by the Foundations Press scholarly board.
A teacher who has lived with Ibn Hishām, who has allowed Al-Sullam to form her reasoning, who carries Al-Shifāʾ in her understanding of the Prophet ﷺ brings something to the room that a slide deck cannot replicate.
Scholarly Governance
FISLI operates under the governance of a scholarly board that includes Princeton PhD and al-Azhar-trained scholars in the classical Sunni traditions. The board governs theological compliance, endorses Tier 2 and Tier 3 teacher certification credentials, and provides the chain of scholarly transmission that every FISLI unit carries.
Scholarly Board: Princeton PhD and al-Azhar trained scholars.
No content ships without passing a four-gate audit:
Gate 1
Voice and Register Compliance
Editorial standards for tone, register, and academic voice throughout all student and teacher content.
Gate 2
Primary Source Authentication
Every biographical date, place, and count verified against original sources. No unverified claims.
Gate 3
Theological Alignment Review
Every unit reviewed against the Curriculum Governance Framework. Every theological claim checked.
Gate 4
Visual and Formatting Quality Assurance
Every unit rendered to PDF and reviewed page-by-page before delivery.
The theological tradition this curriculum represents: the classical Sunni scholarly consensus of Ahl al-Sunnah, honoring all four madhabs equally, with the scholarly ethical tradition integral to Islamic formation. The seven theological compliance rules that govern every unit are available upon request. View scholarly endorsements →
The source hierarchy: Tier One, Azhar primary, cited freely. Tier Two, authoritative with attribution, used with scholarly context. Tier Three, reference only, cited for context, not as primary authority.
The Founder
Abdulahi M. Gesey
Founder · Cairo
Three years ago I made a decision that restructured everything.
I had a degree in Economics from George Mason University, two technology certifications, and eight years of enterprise systems work in the DC metro area. I left all of it to study the classical Islamic sciences full-time: four months in Medina, then Cairo, under qualified Azharī scholars.
The reason was epistemological: I had read enough of the tradition to know I did not understand it. Not really. I understood about it. That is different.
Three years later, the work is producing something specific: a curriculum built simultaneously from inside the classical scholarly tradition and with professional-grade institutional design. The governance architecture, the quality gates, the tiered certification framework, the licensing model. These are the same systems thinking I applied to cloud architecture and institutional IT for eight years. Scholars build the tradition. Systems thinkers build the infrastructure that carries it.
I am building The Foundations Press from Cairo, where the study continues, toward North America, where the community needs it.
Founding Partners
The Foundations Press is actively seeking founding institutional partners. Founding partners receive a permanent license structure and founding attribution in all program documentation.
Open Partner Slot
Available Now
Founding partner slots available for institutions seeking permanent license and founding attribution.
Fiscal Sponsor · 501c3
Fiscal Sponsor
Directed by Shaykh Dr. Tarek Elgawhary. Shaykh Tarek holds a doctorate in Islamic Law from Princeton University and completed his traditional seminary formation at al-Azhar in Cairo. He is one of the very few scholars in the West who carries both the academic credentials of a research university and the transmitted formation of the classical Islamic seminary. He is the resident scholar at the Islamic Community Center of Potomac (ICCP), the founder of the Making Sense of Islam platform, and the CEO of the Coexist Foundation. As fiscal sponsor and Academic Council Chair of FISLI, Shaykh Tarek brings the institutional authority, scholarly depth, and community trust that the curriculum requires at every level.
Commission and Partnership
We accept a limited number of commissioned curriculum projects each year. If your school, organization, or community needs custom Islamic educational materials built to your context, your students, and your tradition, we want to hear from you. Inquiries are reviewed personally. We respond to every request within 48 hours.
Custom Arabic or Islamic Studies curriculum designed around your school's student population, length of instruction, and pedagogical priorities.
Workshop and training programs for Islamic school faculties. FISLI Framework Implementation and Instructional Coaching.
Adult formation modules and halaqa curricula custom-written for your community's specific needs, level, and format.
The Intellectual Foundation
Islamic epistemology, the isnād system, and the classical sciences explained for a modern audience.
From the Foundations Press Store
Built in Cairo. Reviewed by Princeton PhD scholars. Deployed in North American institutions.
Diagnostic Instrument
Free
One complete classical logic unit — teacher guide, assessments, and classical scholar feature.
Get Free Unit →Diagnostic Instrument
$97
Use code LAUNCH to save $20 · Zakat-eligible · Credited toward annual license
40-item diagnostic across all 5 disciplines. Director's guide + 30-min review call included.
Get the Assessment Kit →Guide
$47
The four-gate governance framework for AI in sacred content. Built from 3 years of Cairo study.
Get the Guide →Listen
Essays on classical Islamic formation, covering the ideas, sources, and scholarly tradition behind the FISLI curriculum. Each episode is a window into the intellectual inheritance that shaped fourteen centuries of Muslim thought.
Episode 1
The classical tradition built an entire science around the Qurʾānic command afalā taʿqilūn. This episode explores why Manṭiq was placed before Fiqh in the classical sequence, and what that ordering reveals about how Muslim scholars understood the relationship between reasoning and law.
Contact
For all inquiries: curriculum, commissions, training, or partnerships.
Or email directly: abdulahi@thefoundationspress.com
The intellectual framework behind this curriculum is publicly available through the Sacred Knowledge essay series, essays on Islamic intellectual formation drawn from years of study under Azharī scholars.
Press & Publications
2026
Medium · AI in Islamic Education
They Said AI Cannot Touch Classical Islam — Here Is What That Debate Taught Me About Manṭiq
2026
Medium · ILLUMINATION (316K subscribers)
2025
Medium · ILLUMINATION (316K subscribers)
2026
Medium · Age of Awareness
We Are Building the First AI-Assisted Classical Islamic Curriculum
2026
Substack Newsletter · Weekly
Sacred Knowledge Weekly, Issues No. 001–007
Classical Islamic scholarship, curriculum building, and institutional thought from Cairo.