Is it permissible for a woman to mix with men for the sake of education?

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
Praise be to Allah, and may peace and blessings be upon the Messenger of Allah. As for what follows, this is one of the tapes from the *Al-Huda wa al-Nur* series of scholarly lessons and legal rulings by our Shaykh, Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani (may Allah preserve him). We ask Allah to benefit everyone with it. And now, with tape number one hundred and seventy-five.

The Shaykh: To learn the knowledge that is a collective obligation from women. And although this is not a reality, I prefer to use a hypothetical example that is not a reality to illustrate a real one. Just as it is not permissible for a man to learn the knowledge of a collective obligation from women, meaning by mixing with women, the reverse is the same: it is not permissible. That is, it is not permissible for women to learn the knowledge that is obligatory upon them, as you exemplified with the knowledge of medicine, for example. There is no doubt that women need female doctors. It is better for a woman to expose herself, and she may be compelled in some of her circumstances to reveal some of her 'awrah (part of the body that must be covered). So it is better for her to reveal herself to women of her own sex than to reveal it before men. Therefore, a woman must learn medicine and what is related to it, but in the prescribed manner, which is that she does not receive that knowledge from men through mixing. Today, we have found means about which we hear a lot: that a man can teach women behind a veil, and through television. In that case, he does not see them, and they do not see him. So this is a path that is, first, among the signs of Allah, and second, among the arguments of Allah against His servants, so that they do not claim that we have no way to learn the knowledge obligatory upon women except through mixing. If seeking this or that knowledge is through a path that does not contradict the Shari'ah, or in which there is no contradiction, then as we said, women are the counterparts of men. But we say that the knowledge which is obligatory upon women—there are sciences that women learn which are not obligatory upon them. We begin with the clear example: the knowledge of law. A woman wants to advocate for men, wants to stand before judges to advocate for men, and there are few lawyers for men. This is not permissible for her to learn such knowledge.