What is the ruling on one who speaks about matters of religion without sufficient knowledge through the media?
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Question:
May Allah reward you, Honorable Shaykh! From time to time, people appear on television screens and satellite channels speaking about matters of religion and Islamic legal knowledge, yet they are not specialists in this Islamic legal knowledge. Their recordings are distributed and embraced, and people turn to them despite their apparent deviation from the Sunnah, their mention of weak and fabricated hadiths, their issuing of fatwas to people, and their taking of dispensations. Is there a word to say?
Answer:
Yes, this is a trial and a test. This is among the fitnah (trial, discord or temptation) that occurs in the end times. These are the ones who appear in the media who either have no knowledge, or they have knowledge but they want to mislead the people. This is a calamity, but praise be to Allah, the Muslim finds others among the scholars of the Muslims. So he should ask those Muslim scholars he trusts and not pay attention to these people, nor buy their tapes, nor listen to them.
Yes, because religion is a trust, and it is not entrusted to anyone except one who is trustworthy, trustworthy in his knowledge and trustworthy in his religion. Do not rely on anyone for Allah except the people of knowledge and the people of piety.
May Allah reward you, Honorable Shaykh! From time to time, people appear on television screens and satellite channels speaking about matters of religion and Islamic legal knowledge, yet they are not specialists in this Islamic legal knowledge. Their recordings are distributed and embraced, and people turn to them despite their apparent deviation from the Sunnah, their mention of weak and fabricated hadiths, their issuing of fatwas to people, and their taking of dispensations. Is there a word to say?
Answer:
Yes, this is a trial and a test. This is among the fitnah (trial, discord or temptation) that occurs in the end times. These are the ones who appear in the media who either have no knowledge, or they have knowledge but they want to mislead the people. This is a calamity, but praise be to Allah, the Muslim finds others among the scholars of the Muslims. So he should ask those Muslim scholars he trusts and not pay attention to these people, nor buy their tapes, nor listen to them.
Yes, because religion is a trust, and it is not entrusted to anyone except one who is trustworthy, trustworthy in his knowledge and trustworthy in his religion. Do not rely on anyone for Allah except the people of knowledge and the people of piety.
Source
قناة «العلامة الدكتور صالح الفوزان»، ما حكم من يتكلم في أمور الدين دون علم كاف عبر وسائل الإعلام؟ للشيخ الفوزان — youtube.com
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.