What is the ruling on holding competitions for memorizing scientific texts and offering prizes for them?
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Question:
Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success. He says: What is the ruling on holding competitions for memorizing scientific texts and offering prizes for them?
Answer:
This is permissible, as Ibn al-Qayyim mentioned regarding scientific and legal issues; because it falls under jihad in the path of Allah, since seeking religious knowledge falls under jihad in the path of Allah according to Imam Ibn al-Qayyim. So such a thing is permissible. But memorizing texts, my brothers, you see, is not seeking knowledge in itself. If you memorize all the texts of the world, you will not become a scholar. You must read the text or the texts with scholars, and they explain them, and you understand their meaning in the correct way. As for mere memorization, my brother, leave it to the book. The book is more trustworthy than you.
The book is more trustworthy than your memorization and your memory. It is not seeking knowledge, not at all. Restricting oneself to memorization is not seeking knowledge. Rather, it may deceive a person, and he may become a pretender to knowledge and issue rulings without knowledge. Yes.
Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success. He says: What is the ruling on holding competitions for memorizing scientific texts and offering prizes for them?
Answer:
This is permissible, as Ibn al-Qayyim mentioned regarding scientific and legal issues; because it falls under jihad in the path of Allah, since seeking religious knowledge falls under jihad in the path of Allah according to Imam Ibn al-Qayyim. So such a thing is permissible. But memorizing texts, my brothers, you see, is not seeking knowledge in itself. If you memorize all the texts of the world, you will not become a scholar. You must read the text or the texts with scholars, and they explain them, and you understand their meaning in the correct way. As for mere memorization, my brother, leave it to the book. The book is more trustworthy than you.
The book is more trustworthy than your memorization and your memory. It is not seeking knowledge, not at all. Restricting oneself to memorization is not seeking knowledge. Rather, it may deceive a person, and he may become a pretender to knowledge and issue rulings without knowledge. Yes.
Source
قناة «العلامة الدكتور صالح الفوزان»، [1762 -3022] ما حكم إقامة المسابقات في حفظ المتون العلمية ووضع جوائز على ذلك؟ - الشيخ صالح الفوزان — youtube.com
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.