Seeking Knowledge from Books and Tapes Without Shaykhs
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
The questioner:
This questioner asks: Honorable Shaykh Salih, is it permissible to take knowledge from people who do not have scholars, but rather have derived their understanding from books and tapes?
The Shaykh:
This is a great danger. This is a loss, and may Allah protect us from it. It is false scholarship. This false scholarship is what has destroyed people. Knowledge is not taken except from its people, from those who have transmitted it from others. Knowledge is by transmission. It is not knowledge from papers, or from books, or from tapes, or from this. A person may benefit from them; there is nothing wrong with that. But to rely on them as a means of teaching, or to consider them a method of learning, that is a great error.
How many have perished and how many have been misguided among those who falsely claim scholarship, who issue rulings to people without knowledge, because they do not understand these books. A scholar is necessary to explain them and clarify them. So they should not rely on their own understanding without the scholars. This is a danger for them and for others whom they issue rulings to, teach, or study with. Yes.
The questioner:
Shaykh Salih, on this occasion, what is Shaykh Salih’s (may Allah preserve him) word to the Muslim community regarding the fact that religious knowledge is to be taken from trusted scholars?
The Shaykh:
My brother, praise be to Allah, our state, the Islamic states, have opened primary, middle, and secondary schools, as well as Shari'ah colleges and higher studies institutions. They have opened schools, and the scholars in the mosques have study circles with students who spread the knowledge and explain it to the people.
As for a person limiting himself to reading books or listening to tapes or the like, that is what is called seeking knowledge without proper guidance, and that is compounded ignorance, and that is the most dangerous thing. Compounded ignorance is more dangerous than simple ignorance. The one with compounded ignorance is the one who is ignorant and is ignorant that he is ignorant; he thinks he is a scholar. As for the one with simple ignorance, he knows himself, so if you teach him or inform him, he retracts, because he has no confidence in his own status or himself. So the matter of learning is a great matter, and for this reason, the state spends a huge, massive budget on it. If books were sufficient, the state would have bought books and distributed them to the people and been content with that, and that is cheaper than the massive budgets for educational institutions. Yes.
This questioner asks: Honorable Shaykh Salih, is it permissible to take knowledge from people who do not have scholars, but rather have derived their understanding from books and tapes?
The Shaykh:
This is a great danger. This is a loss, and may Allah protect us from it. It is false scholarship. This false scholarship is what has destroyed people. Knowledge is not taken except from its people, from those who have transmitted it from others. Knowledge is by transmission. It is not knowledge from papers, or from books, or from tapes, or from this. A person may benefit from them; there is nothing wrong with that. But to rely on them as a means of teaching, or to consider them a method of learning, that is a great error.
How many have perished and how many have been misguided among those who falsely claim scholarship, who issue rulings to people without knowledge, because they do not understand these books. A scholar is necessary to explain them and clarify them. So they should not rely on their own understanding without the scholars. This is a danger for them and for others whom they issue rulings to, teach, or study with. Yes.
The questioner:
Shaykh Salih, on this occasion, what is Shaykh Salih’s (may Allah preserve him) word to the Muslim community regarding the fact that religious knowledge is to be taken from trusted scholars?
The Shaykh:
My brother, praise be to Allah, our state, the Islamic states, have opened primary, middle, and secondary schools, as well as Shari'ah colleges and higher studies institutions. They have opened schools, and the scholars in the mosques have study circles with students who spread the knowledge and explain it to the people.
As for a person limiting himself to reading books or listening to tapes or the like, that is what is called seeking knowledge without proper guidance, and that is compounded ignorance, and that is the most dangerous thing. Compounded ignorance is more dangerous than simple ignorance. The one with compounded ignorance is the one who is ignorant and is ignorant that he is ignorant; he thinks he is a scholar. As for the one with simple ignorance, he knows himself, so if you teach him or inform him, he retracts, because he has no confidence in his own status or himself. So the matter of learning is a great matter, and for this reason, the state spends a huge, massive budget on it. If books were sufficient, the state would have bought books and distributed them to the people and been content with that, and that is cheaper than the massive budgets for educational institutions. Yes.
Source
فتاوى على الهواء 22-04-1436هـ — af.org.sa (18:40)
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.