Public edition · version 1.0 · 20 October 2026

The FISLI Standard: how every unit is built, sourced and checked

This is the standard The Foundations Press holds itself to, published so that a school, a parent or a reviewer can check the curriculum against it rather than take our word. It fixes the shape of a unit, the sources a unit may rest on, the four gates every unit passes, the language rules, and what the Press does and does not claim. It is versioned; changes are logged on this page and errors on the errata page.

Download the Standard (PDF)   CC BY 4.0 · cite as below

1. What the standard governs

FISLI (the Foundations of Sacred Islamic Literacy Initiative) is a five-discipline sequence for grades 6 to 12: Prophetic Sīrah, ʿAqīdah, ʿUlūm al-Qurʾān, Ḥadīth sciences and Manṭiq, eight units per discipline per band, three lessons per unit. The standard governs every one of the 80 units, the teacher guides, the assessments, the films and the free downloads. The scope and sequence is published separately.

2. The eight parts of a unit

Every unit has the same eight parts in the same order, so that a teacher who has taught one unit can teach any other, and a reviewer knows where to look.

3. The tiered source framework

A claim in a FISLI unit rests on a named classical source, cited by work and, where the edition allows, by volume and page. Sources are tiered; the tier governs how a source may be used and what must accompany it. Modern secondary writing is not a source for a claim about the tradition. No living scholar is cited or named in the Press's public documents.

Ḥadīth are cited by collection and number with the Companion narrator named. The Qurʾān is quoted from the Tanzil Uthmani text, never retyped; English follows Saheeh International and says so. Every classical scholar carries both dates, AH and CE, at first mention.

4. The four gates

Every unit passes four gates in sequence before it can be released. A failed gate sends the unit back to the start of the sequence; a later gate never compensates for an earlier one.

1. Gate 1, Voice and register. Register consistency; no unverifiable warmth; the house language rules.
2. Gate 2, Source authentication. Every scholar dated AH/CE at first mention; named narrators on every ḥadīth; no untraced quote or statistic; every source on its tier.
3. Gate 3, Theological review. The one gate never delegated to any tool. Sources inside the classical tradition; the four schools honoured equally; no school labels.
4. Gate 4, Render and release. The printed page inspected: Arabic shaping, tables, overflow. Entry in the release register with three dated sign-offs.

The theological gate is the one gate that is never delegated to software in any capacity. The Press's AI governance framework publishes how the other gates may and may not use assistive tools.

5. The theological position, stated structurally

FISLI teaches the classical Sunni tradition through its own books. All four schools of law are honoured equally; no unit implies that one school is more correct or more faithful to the Qurʾān than another. The Sufi tradition is honoured, and Aḥmad Zarrūq's Qawāʿid al-Taṣawwuf (d. 899 AH / 1493 CE) is a core text. The curriculum does not attach school labels to itself or to its students, does not apply the label of innovation to classical Sunni practice, and does not accuse classical scholars or their transmitted practices. Where the books disagree, the unit says so inline and names both sources.

6. Language rules

The two signs ʾ and ʿ for hamza and ʿayn; full diacritics on transliteration; the honorific ﷺ after the Prophet's name; ranges written in words ("9 to 12"); no dashes used as punctuation; no performative warmth. A unit that reads like an advertisement fails Gate 1.

7. What the Press claims, and what it does not

The status of the work is stated as it is. As of 20 October 2026, all 80 Level One units are built to this standard and are in review; a unit is marked Released only when the release register carries three dated sign-offs for it, and the register is kept by the Curriculum Director alone. The Press says "checked against the printed page" and shows how; it does not say "verified by scholars" of a unit that has not completed its review. Licensing institutions receive the review status of every unit they adopt.

8. Versioning, changelog and errata

This page is the public edition of the standard. The version number changes when a rule changes; the date changes when the text changes. Every published build of the curriculum carries a manifest with a SHA-256 checksum for every file, so a school can confirm that the edition it holds is the edition that was released.

Errors found in any unit, film or download are listed, with the correction and the date, on the errata page. To report one, write to abdulahi@thefoundationspress.com with "Erratum" in the subject line.

9. How to cite this standard

The Foundations Press. The FISLI Standard, public edition, version 1.0. 20 October 2026. https://thefoundationspress.com/standard/. Licensed CC BY 4.0: it may be copied, adapted and used to evaluate any curriculum, with attribution.