The Shaykh’s advice to the young people who have taken up authorship or editing before they have yet matured.

The Shaykh : So, are all these young people who have now filled the vast office spaces or the bookstores that sell books, filled with hundreds of books and treatises, people who are neither in the caravan nor in the army in this knowledge, and who have left no trace, neither in their smaller community nor in the larger society? All that is the case is that some ideas occurred to them, so they devoted themselves to certain books, transferring from them and composing their own opinions and ideas, and then publishing them for people, either by authoring something themselves or by commenting on the work of others, until their name appeared under the title “edited by so-and-so.” This is forcing oneself into the company of the lesser group about which Allah (Mighty and Majestic) said: .
Therefore, I advise our brothers, these young people, to be patient in presenting themselves in the ranks of scholars, researchers, and editors, because they are still at the beginning of the path.
A few days ago, one of them presented to me a printed treatise, and on the back cover it was written “Second Edition.” What is this book? He says in the introduction: “I have selected these hadiths from al-Suyuti’s *al-Jami’ al-Saghir* and from the hadiths of the Household of the Prophet.” Al-Suyuti’s *al-Jami’ al-Saghir*—as many of you know—contains fabricated hadiths, let alone weak hadiths. So what did this man do? He took *al-Jami’ al-Saghir*—and if only he had taken *Sahih al-Jami’ al-Saghir*—he took *al-Jami’ al-Saghir* and selected from it about three hundred hadiths, then completed this with another fifty, which he claimed were from the hadiths of the Household of the Prophet, and which contain fabricated hadiths, let alone weak ones. What did this man do? Nothing. But he loved to appear before people as an author!!
In *al-Jami’ al-Saghir* there are seven thousand authentic hadiths, and about the same number of weak hadiths. So imagine if every person with an idea came and took from *al-Jami’ al-Saghir* to compose a treatise of three hundred hadiths, or even a thousand hadiths. If we suppose that treatises were composed of a thousand hadiths from *al-Jami’ al-Saghir*, we would have about fifteen authors, with nothing in their works except a repetition of the hadiths found in *al-Jami’ al-Saghir*!! Is this a service to knowledge?! And is the one who performed this service from the people of knowledge?! The answer is: No. The curse of arrogance—now—has taken hold of many students of knowledge, let alone those who are known as callers to Islam. This arrogance and knowledge have afflicted them, while they are far from it, the farthest distance. And the example ofThe Shaykh : the Egyptian al-Ghazali is not far from you; for he elevated his claim to what he had no knowledge of, and he weakened many hadiths in *Sahih al-Bukhari* and *Sahih Muslim* because they contradicted his culture. And if only it had been an Islamic culture! Rather, it is a foreign, Western culture!
So the point is that purification and upbringing are necessary. We are at the beginning of the path of purification; but we have not yet taken a single step on the path of upbringing. We must observe ourselves, strive against them, and raise them upon the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), and we must be far from following desires. For he (peace and blessings be upon him) said: .
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