Written by Amatullah from
MuslimMatters:
Bismillah
It’s the year 1244; a group of children go to see their friend to ask him to join them in playing games. This young boy, at the tender of age of ten, turns them down. They continue to probe him, and even attempt to force him to play, but this boy refusesand returns to what he was doing before they interrupted him: reciting the
Qur’an.
This young boy was Yahya ibn Sharraf, otherwise known as Imam an-Nawawi (
rahimahullah).
Fast forward hundreds of years later to 2010. Knowledge is readily available and easily accessible. A quick search on the internet will easily produce more knowledge for us than was available to Imam Nawawi (
rahimahullah), yet we do not have the likes of Imam Nawawi walking amongst us. Rather, what we see now is a methodology of seeking knowledge that is strange and backwards.
In this day and age, our young generation of students are proficient in the most minute details of
Fiqh and
Aqeedah, yet they are unable to recite Surah Fatiha with the same level of proficiency. These same youth have the opinions of various scholars memorized, yet they have not memorized more than a few chapters of the Speech of Allah. Even more so, they can debate in great detail why a certain group has incorrect
Aqeedah, but they do not understand Arabic and when they stand to pray before their Lord, they do not understand His Words.
Strange, isn’t it?
Imam ibn AbdulBarr (rahimahullah) said,
“Seeking knowledge is in consecutive levels and ranks, it does not befit that they should be bypassed. Whoever bypasses them at once, then he has bypassed the path of the salaf. Whoever bypasses them intentionally will go astray and whoever bypasses them with sincere effort will fall into error.”
Just as becoming a doctor involves stages and methods, knowledge should also be sought through a process with stages. Today, these stages are mixed together and reversed like a person with no formal education entering medical school.
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here.