What makes it so hard is that you can't recognize words as words so easily. You have to decode them letter by letter. I studied classical Arabic in college, a

What makes it so hard is that you can't recognize words as words so easily. You have to decode them letter by letter. I studied classical Arabic in college, and at the end of a year I could only recognize a couple hundred words as words. I doubt there's any solution besides practice. Perhaps you could optimize practice by making flashcards of the most common words and training yourself to recognize them quickly.