Seeking a High Grade and a Degree and Its Relationship to Showing Off
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Question:
Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success. He says: Does my seeking to obtain a high grade in university count as showing off? And does striving to seek knowledge for the sake of obtaining a degree also count as showing off and striving?
Answer:
Brothers, seek knowledge, seek knowledge, and leave these doubts with us. I mean this, I mean that. Seek knowledge; knowledge is good. Perhaps at first you seek it for a worldly purpose, and then it turns into a guide to the truth and to the religion. Knowledge is blessed. Some of the Salaf (the earliest generations) said, “We sought knowledge for the world, but it refused to be anything but for the religion.” Yes, seek knowledge. Do not add to yourselves these doubts. Yes.
Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success. He says: Does my seeking to obtain a high grade in university count as showing off? And does striving to seek knowledge for the sake of obtaining a degree also count as showing off and striving?
Answer:
Brothers, seek knowledge, seek knowledge, and leave these doubts with us. I mean this, I mean that. Seek knowledge; knowledge is good. Perhaps at first you seek it for a worldly purpose, and then it turns into a guide to the truth and to the religion. Knowledge is blessed. Some of the Salaf (the earliest generations) said, “We sought knowledge for the world, but it refused to be anything but for the religion.” Yes, seek knowledge. Do not add to yourselves these doubts. Yes.
Source
شرح إغاثة اللهفان من مصائد الشيطان لابن القيم، بداية من قول المُصَنِّف : ومن علامات صحة القلب — islamhouse.com (1:16:15)
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.