All praise is due to Allah, peace and blessings be upon the Messenger of Allah and upon all his family and companions.
It is an obligation on every Muslim to learn the rules of correct recitation which save the tongue from making mistakes and changes of meaning. Learning them enables a Muslim to recite surat Al-Faatihah and the rest of the Quranic chapters correctly, and in line with the linguistic rules of the original Arabic language.
It is not obligatory, but rather preferable for a Muslim to observe recitation rules related to the properties of letters and their manner of articulation since not being capable of observing them does not change the meaning.
Shaykh al-Islam Zakaria Al-Ansari said: "It is imperative that a Muslim learns the recitation rules that preserve the meaning and function of words since failure to do so renders him/her sinful.” {Al_Dak`kaa`k Al Mohkamah(19)}. He also said: "The evident error is: a mispronunciation that causes a change in the meaning and function such as adding a Dhammah(the short vowel {U} on top of the letter) instead of a Kasrah (the short vowel{i} below the letter).The concealed error is: a mispronunciation that neither affects the meaning nor the function such as turning ن intoم and Idghaam (assimilation, i.e. joining two letters together to become one letter.”(P.38).
Mullah Ali Hanafi said: "Rules of correct recitation must be learned in order to avoid changes in meaning and function; whereas, it is preferable for a Muslim to learn the rules which preserve meaning and make it clearer since there is a great deal of hardship involved in mastering all the rules .”
