What are the methods and ways of seeking knowledge, and what is your opinion of one who memorizes but does not understand, and the reverse?
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
The questioner : Now, O honorable Shaykh, what are the methods and ways of seeking knowledge, and what is your opinion of one who memorizes but does not understand, or one who understands but does not memorize?
The Shaykh : The methods for seeking knowledge are that a person should begin with the basics of knowledge before the advanced, so that he ascends to the top from the bottom of the stairs.
He should begin, for example, with concise books, and it is necessary to have a Shaykh who reads to him and explains to him, because this, which I mean reading from the Shaykh, yields two great benefits for the person. The first benefit is that it involves less error than receiving knowledge from books, because the scholar has a breadth of knowledge; he knows the general and the specific, the absolute and the qualified, the abrogating and the abrogated, the ambiguous and the clarified, which the student of knowledge who takes a book and merely reads it does not know. He has knowledge that the student who reads from books does not have.
The second is that it is the closest way to acquiring knowledge, because if you take knowledge from books, you must review it many times, and you may remain on a single issue for several days if you want to clarify it. But if you take knowledge from a scholar who gives you the essence, he tells you: "It was said so and so, and it was said so and so, and the stronger position is this," and he explains the reason for its strength and refutes the argument of the other.
Therefore, receiving knowledge from scholars is undoubtedly more preferable and better for these two reasons. And if a person is granted a scholar, he guides him to what he should begin with from the means of knowledge. As for the one who memorizes but does not understand, and the one who understands but does not memorize: the one who memorizes but does not understand should ask Allah the Exalted to grant him understanding, and the one who understands but does not memorize should ask Allah to grant him memorization. He who has been given one will be given the other, if Allah wills. Yes.
The Shaykh : The methods for seeking knowledge are that a person should begin with the basics of knowledge before the advanced, so that he ascends to the top from the bottom of the stairs.
He should begin, for example, with concise books, and it is necessary to have a Shaykh who reads to him and explains to him, because this, which I mean reading from the Shaykh, yields two great benefits for the person. The first benefit is that it involves less error than receiving knowledge from books, because the scholar has a breadth of knowledge; he knows the general and the specific, the absolute and the qualified, the abrogating and the abrogated, the ambiguous and the clarified, which the student of knowledge who takes a book and merely reads it does not know. He has knowledge that the student who reads from books does not have.
The second is that it is the closest way to acquiring knowledge, because if you take knowledge from books, you must review it many times, and you may remain on a single issue for several days if you want to clarify it. But if you take knowledge from a scholar who gives you the essence, he tells you: "It was said so and so, and it was said so and so, and the stronger position is this," and he explains the reason for its strength and refutes the argument of the other.
Therefore, receiving knowledge from scholars is undoubtedly more preferable and better for these two reasons. And if a person is granted a scholar, he guides him to what he should begin with from the means of knowledge. As for the one who memorizes but does not understand, and the one who understands but does not memorize: the one who memorizes but does not understand should ask Allah the Exalted to grant him understanding, and the one who understands but does not memorize should ask Allah to grant him memorization. He who has been given one will be given the other, if Allah wills. Yes.