The Ruling on Choosing a University Major Between Religious and Scientific Fields

Question:
This questioner begins his question with two lines of poetry: "A lecture increases knowledge with knowledge, and a scholar who is a master, a wise man. One university calls to every living being, and a university that hearts revive." The question asks: Which is better for a student who has his high school diploma? The scientific colleges, such as medicine, or the religious colleges?

Answer:
Muslims are in greater need of religious knowledge, and they are created for this matter: to worship Allah and know His rights. They are also in need of the other sciences, such as medicine, engineering, mathematics, and so on, that benefit people. They are in need of this. And whoever learns them with a good intention to benefit people with them and to seek help with them in obeying Allah, he is also thanked and rewarded. But it is not permissible to dispense with religious knowledge because of them. It is obligatory to learn the religious knowledge, and to learn what one cannot afford to be ignorant of from his religion. So if he learns medicine or something else, and it is a reward that Muslims need, then that is a required and thanked matter. And the Muslims will pray for you in all your conditions. Then you know yourself and your wealth best. If you are able to be in the knowledge of the Shari'ah and to understand it, then that is better for you, and more excellent, and has a better outcome. If you do not have energy for that, and you learn from the Shari'ah what you know of your religion, and you see that you are inclined toward medicine or toward other sciences that Muslims need, then there is no harm. Work in what you are inclined to, with the organization of piety and uprightness, and with the care for beneficial knowledge through the way of studying, the library, the company of companions, and asking the people of knowledge. Let your occupation with medicine or engineering or something else not be a cause for you to neglect the generalization of your religious knowledge, through the way of the scientific circles, through the way of studying, through the way of writing, through the way of asking, through the way of reading, and so on. Yes.