How can "purification and education" be realized in the reality of Muslims today?

The questioner : The society is sick in terms of impurities... the beliefs. Is the treatment purification of the religion and education?

The Shaykh : Correct.

The questioner : But given the reality we are living in now, what is the way? For example, even for me to purify the religion, I need to go back to a set of volumes, a set of books, and so on, and this is not possible... with work...?

The Shaykh : This, my brother, goes back to my previous research with the honorable professor who was sitting here; that every person must... so the answer was that there are individual obligations and there are collective obligations, so it is not an individual obligation for every individual among the Muslims to be scholars, especially scholars in everything, in hadith, in tafsir, in fiqh, in language, in... and so on.

The questioner : But...

The Shaykh : But, if you allow me.

The questioner : Pardon me.

The Shaykh : But it is obligatory for every Muslim to strive to know what he must know, and people in this are like in the Noble Qur'an where He made them two groups: , so the verse is explicit that the Muslims addressed by this verse are two categories: the knowledgeable and the ignorant. So it is obligatory for the ignorant to ask the knowledgeable, and in that is a hint from Allah (Mighty and Majestic) that it is not obligatory for every individual to be a scholar, otherwise He would not have acknowledged this reality and this fair division. On that basis, we say to you: it is not individually obligatory for you to go back and study Islam and sift through the old books they call the yellow books, and there are books that are much yellower than that, if the expression is correct; where there are manuscripts that dust and stumbling have settled on, and spiders have nested in, perhaps tens, if not hundreds, of years have passed without a single book being opened!
We say: it is not obligatory for you to do this, but it is obligatory for you at least, if you are not as you wish to be, namely: a scholar; , and this is a solution to the problem, and do not hold me to account; because it is part of our call to be frank with all our brothers. I am surprised by such a question that I hear on various occasions, so I deduce from such a question—namely: this question—that there is a widespread current of ideas among a large group of youth that these Salafis want every individual of the eight hundred million Muslims to be the Abu Hanifah of his time in fiqh, the al-Bukhari of his time in hadith, and Sibawayhi of his time in grammar, and so on. No, by Allah, we do not see this even in a dream, and this is an impossible matter.

The questioner : And I know this... Professor.

The Shaykh : I am not blaming you, rather I say: you must ask, but I am surprised what drives this question other than that there is an idea here, a delusion, that these Salafis want every person, my brother, we Salafis, unfortunately, always talk to our brothers and encourage them, like Professor "A'id 'Abbas" and "Ali Khushan" and others, my brother, devote yourselves to us for knowledge, we do not have people to turn to who adopt this principle, let alone others, so we do not have these people that you are saying, so I must do this and that, so there must be a group as in the Noble Qur'an, a group who specialize in religion, not every individual, but the shortcoming now that is happening in reality is not that you have not studied fiqh in all its aspects and schools and the evidence for every opinion, and how many opinions there are, rather the blame, if there is any blame on you, is that you are satisfied with what you read in elementary school and some quick information, or in the Sharia college, one issue here and one issue there, not taking a sequential fiqh, the chapter of prayer—for example—or purity or marriage... with all its rulings, and if you took it, you would take it as the Hanafi school, which is the predominant one in these lands in the time of the Ottoman Caliphate, and we inherited that until recently, and now it has started to be a mixed bag, a little Hanafi fiqh, a little Shafi'i fiqh, and so on.
If you have a study that you are satisfied with, you hear a new voice from such a Shaykh—for example—in your country or in another country saying: such and such an issue must be adopted; because the Messenger said so and so, do not pay attention to that, you do not understand that I mean you personally; because there is no blame, I have not previously met you and known you, but this is the reality of most of our Muslim youth, you hear that such and such a creed is disavowed by Islam, rather it is polytheism and shirk and misguidance, you do not care about that, and there is another type that says: researching these issues are matters that divide the ranks, so we are surprised, what ranks are these and the Muslims are divided?! There is no division greater than this division in reality; therefore the way, as we said, is to start with "purification and education" together, but this is not obligatory for every person to be a scholar, but as was said in some narrations from the righteous Salaf: "Be a scholar, or a learner, or a listener, and do not be the fourth, lest you perish." Most of the conscious Muslim youth today—leave the common people—do not specialize in religion, they do not ask.

The questioner : What is the fourth, my master?

The Shaykh: Yes.

The questioner : What is the fourth?

The Shaykh : Meaning, not a scholar, not a learner, and not a listener; meaning, living aimlessly like this in life.

The questioner : No... two grades left.

The Shaykh : Meaning, five?

The questioner : ... it was, be a scholar, or a learner, or a listener, or a lover, and do not be the fifth, lest you perish.

The Shaykh : Is it a marginal note, like that?

Another questioner: It is a narration.

The questioner : I have it memorized.

Another questioner : Or a follower.

The Shaykh : In any case, it is not a hadith.
The purpose, Professor, in summary: that whoever is able to verify, it is obligatory for him to do so and call people to it, and whoever is not able , this is our creed.

The questioner : ... a question that the people of knowledge today, I have in my country dozens of Shaykhs; are they not considered people of knowledge?

The Shaykh : How? This needs research.

The questioner: Yes.

The Shaykh : And this is actually a good opportunity when He (the Exalted) said: ; do you mean by the people of knowledge the people of dancing in dhikr? Of course you will quickly say: No. Okay, so we need to take a second step, the negative matter is not knowledge... so when you give me an answer to my question: meaning the people of dancing in dhikr are? You tell me: No. You answered, but there is no knowledge in that answer, until you say: the people of knowledge are these, who are they? We hear from you or you hear from me as you wish, meaning; do you want to answer or shall I answer?

The questioner: Go ahead.

The Shaykh: All right.

The questioner : I know them, the people of the Sunnah.

The Shaykh : I say: the people of knowledge are the people of the Qur'an, and the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) says: , and certainly the dhikr here is the Noble Qur'an, and the Qur'an explains part of itself as is one of the principles of the science of tafsir, as the scholars explained, especially among them Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah in "Introduction to Tafsir," a treatise of his, so the people of knowledge are the people of the Qur'an, but does it mean the people of knowledge are only the people of the Qur'an? Meaning: is the one who knows only the Qur'an a scholar and of the type to which Allah referred the ignorant in the previous verse: or is there something else?
There is certainly something else, you answered with a brief answer when you said: they are the people of the Sunnah, but we must know what the evidence is for this statement, the people of the Sunnah? He (the Exalted) said: ; so this verse has for us two proofs for two issues; one of them relates to the answer to our previous question, the people of knowledge, He said here: , and in the other verse: , so in each of these and these, the intended dhikr is certainly the Qur'an, so we took another proof from this verse that the people of knowledge are the people of the Qur'an. Okay, where did we get the Sunnah from? From the completion of the previous verse: ; so the people of knowledge are the people of the Qur'an and the Sunnah, not the Qur'an alone.
I am absolutely certain, without any doubt or hesitation, that anyone who insists on holding to the Qur'an alone and making that his Islam is not a Muslim. This is because he does not believe in the Qur'an, and the Qur'an commands us to follow the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), describing him as the one to whom the Qur'an was revealed so that he might explain it to the people. Therefore, the people of knowledge are those who combine the Qur'an with the Sunnah. However, I am adding a clarification of the truth and reality here: Who are the people of the Sunnah? It will be said that they are the people of hadith, meaning those who know hadith. But are all the people of hadith the people of the Sunnah? My answer may seem somewhat strange, but I say: Not all the people of hadith are the people of the Sunnah. This is due to what is known to everyone, though people are heedless of these facts: as we mentioned before, things that are not part of the Sunnah have entered into it. The scholars of hadith, regarding this bitter reality that non-Sunnah matters have entered the Sunnah, fall into two groups. One group—and they are the overwhelming majority of hadith scholars—narrate whatever comes to them. It is enough for one of them to say: "So-and-so narrated to me, he said: So-and-so narrated to me, he said: So-and-so narrated to me," until he reaches the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him). In this chain, there is a man about whom it was said of some of them: "If he testified to a blade of grass, his testimony would not be accepted"!! What is the benefit of this chain if it is broken at the point of someone whose testimony is not accepted even for a blade of grass?! This is the case with most of the well-known hadith scholars. The few among them who are the critical hadith scholars, such as al-Bukhari, Muslim, Imam Ahmad, Yahya ibn Ma'in, and others, are the people of knowledge. This second type are the people of knowledge. Therefore, while we call for the Book and the Sunnah and for acting upon the hadith, we want to purify this hadith so that we do not present to people a disease in the name of a cure. We present to them a hadith about the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) that is fabricated against the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him). We present to them what appears to be a cure, but is in reality a disease. And most of the hadiths—pardon me—many of the hadiths that are circulated by tongues, preachers, and exhorters, and so on, are either weak or fabricated.
Therefore, it is obligatory for one who wants to be among the people of knowledge not only to understand the Qur'an, but also to study the Sunnah. The most difficult of all the sciences of the Shari'ah to study is the science of hadith, because of its routes, chains of narration, and biographies of the narrators. Recently, I came across a quote from some Western writers who praise the Muslims and say: The Muslims have the science of al-jarh wa al-ta'dil (the critique and vindication of narrators), which they have uniquely possessed throughout all of history, unlike all other nations. They have biographies—by Allah, I no longer remember now, more than forty or fifty thousand—no, by Allah, much more—biographies. He says they have more than forty or fifty thousand biographies of their scholars...