The Ruling on Selling Books of Atheism
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The questioner:
Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success. He says: One of the muftis appeared on one of the satellite channels last Friday and said there is no objection to selling books of atheism, because the Salaf used to respond to books of atheism and did not prohibit their sale. How do we respond to this, may Allah preserve you?
The Shaykh:
This is a defective answer. It is permissible for a scholar to buy a book of falsehood in order to refute it and dismantle it, especially if he cannot obtain it except by buying it, because this is for a valid purpose. However, issuing a fatwa that everyone should buy books of atheism, when there are ignorant people among them and it leads to their promotion, is a wrong and misguided fatwa. It is not permissible to sell them except to the specialists who intend to refute and respond to them.
The questioner:
Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success. What about what women wear?
The Shaykh:
Therefore, in public libraries, there are books with restricted access that are not open to everyone, but only to specialists. Yes. As for displaying these books for sale so that men and women, the ignorant and the knowledgeable, the upright and the misguided, can buy them, this is not permissible. Yes.
Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success. He says: One of the muftis appeared on one of the satellite channels last Friday and said there is no objection to selling books of atheism, because the Salaf used to respond to books of atheism and did not prohibit their sale. How do we respond to this, may Allah preserve you?
The Shaykh:
This is a defective answer. It is permissible for a scholar to buy a book of falsehood in order to refute it and dismantle it, especially if he cannot obtain it except by buying it, because this is for a valid purpose. However, issuing a fatwa that everyone should buy books of atheism, when there are ignorant people among them and it leads to their promotion, is a wrong and misguided fatwa. It is not permissible to sell them except to the specialists who intend to refute and respond to them.
The questioner:
Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success. What about what women wear?
The Shaykh:
Therefore, in public libraries, there are books with restricted access that are not open to everyone, but only to specialists. Yes. As for displaying these books for sale so that men and women, the ignorant and the knowledgeable, the upright and the misguided, can buy them, this is not permissible. Yes.
Source
المنتقى من أخبار سيد المرسلين [47] — alfawzan.live (1:01:04)
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.