The Ruling on Reading the Books *Al-Uqd al-Farid* and *One Thousand and One Nights*
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Question:
May Allah reward you with good. He says that he likes to read books, especially literary ones, and he asks about the book *Al-Uqd al-Farid*, which he reads every night, and the book *One Thousand and One Nights*.
Answer:
*One Thousand and One Nights* has no benefit; he should not waste his time reading it. As for *Al-Uqd al-Farid*, it contains both beneficial and worthless material. If he has the ability to distinguish, he should take the good words and sayings and know what is worthless and erroneous in it. He should not read it unless he has the ability to distinguish between the two, taking the benefit and leaving what is not beneficial. If he cannot distinguish, he should not read it. And, praise be to Allah, there is a great deal of pure literature available.
May Allah reward you with good. He says that he likes to read books, especially literary ones, and he asks about the book *Al-Uqd al-Farid*, which he reads every night, and the book *One Thousand and One Nights*.
Answer:
*One Thousand and One Nights* has no benefit; he should not waste his time reading it. As for *Al-Uqd al-Farid*, it contains both beneficial and worthless material. If he has the ability to distinguish, he should take the good words and sayings and know what is worthless and erroneous in it. He should not read it unless he has the ability to distinguish between the two, taking the benefit and leaving what is not beneficial. If he cannot distinguish, he should not read it. And, praise be to Allah, there is a great deal of pure literature available.
Source
نور على الدرب - الفوزان - 03/037 — archive.org (9:07)
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.