Guidance for Students of Knowledge and the People’s Need for Them

Question:
I ask your permission to raise the questions from the audience. This questioner says: Is there a word of guidance regarding students of knowledge and the people’s need for that, especially in this time when scholars have become few and trials have multiplied? May Allah reward you.

Answer:
There is no doubt that this is a very important matter. It is obligatory for the youth of the Ummah to take the initiative in seeking knowledge from the hands of scholars, and not to learn from books, or from those who pretend to be scholars, or from the ignorant.
Or from those who carry bad or deviant ideas. Rather, they must take the initiative to contact scholars and ask them, learn from their hands, attend lessons in the mosques, lectures, and seminars, as well as enroll in formal education.
From primary school to postgraduate studies, there is much good in it. There are scholars in it, there are prescribed books in it, and there is much good in it, especially in this land, praise be to Allah. Formal education has much good in it. If a person combines formal education with studying under the shaykhs in the mosques, that is good upon good. But if he is unable to do formal education or is not accepted into it, he should turn to the mosques, to the scholars in the mosques, and to asking about what is difficult for him. As for saying there is no one, sitting in his house, and reading in books, or going to an ignorant person like himself or a person who carries bad ideas and learning from him, and saying this one understands and this one does not, that is a great danger. Yes.