When do you see, may Allah grant you success, that it is permissible for a student of knowledge to look into misguided books, such as communist books and articles of disbelief and heresy?
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The questioner : When do you see, may Allah grant you success, that it is permissible for a student of knowledge to look into misguided books, such as communist books and articles of disbelief and heresy?
The Shaykh : Before I answer this question, what do you think if we threw a person into the sea who has not learned to swim? Is it a mistake or correct? He would drown and not survive, right? He would drown. So, what I see is that it is not permissible for a person to read in misleading books until he has a reserve of Islamic knowledge, so that he does not fall into the mud and slip, or into the water and drown. Undoubtedly, the people of falsehood in their books adorn the speech and embellish it with phrases until the reader thinks it is truth, and the matter becomes confused for him. Allah the Exalted said:[Al-An'am 6:112] to deceive people with it. So, when the reader who has no reserve of Islamic knowledge reads it, truth becomes confused with falsehood for him, and he errs. So, what I see is that it is forbidden for a person who has no reserve of Islamic knowledge to read in these books. If he has a reserve of Islamic knowledge, let him read them, not as a recipient who benefits from them, because there is no benefit in them, but as a critic who looks at their defects and faults so that he can clarify them to people so that they are not misled by them. For this reason, the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) ordered the one who hears about the Dajjal to stay away from him. The Dajjal, I think, is known: the man who will appear in the end times and claim to be the Lord. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: This is the hadith, or its meaning. So the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) ordered us to stay away from the Dajjal so that we do not fall into his trial. Similarly, these books must be avoided except by a person who has a reserve of knowledge by which he knows the truth from falsehood.
The Shaykh : Before I answer this question, what do you think if we threw a person into the sea who has not learned to swim? Is it a mistake or correct? He would drown and not survive, right? He would drown. So, what I see is that it is not permissible for a person to read in misleading books until he has a reserve of Islamic knowledge, so that he does not fall into the mud and slip, or into the water and drown. Undoubtedly, the people of falsehood in their books adorn the speech and embellish it with phrases until the reader thinks it is truth, and the matter becomes confused for him. Allah the Exalted said: