'Ilm - Gotta Have It
by Muhammad Alshareef
Allah subhana wa ta'ala blessed myself and my wife with the opportunity to live in Madinah Munawwarah for 6 years, and this is only three years ago when I had graduated from Madinah. It was the final year for me and the exams were coming up. So it was exam week and we had the week off before the exams and it was a Thursday (and the weekends over there are Thursday and Friday). So I was sleeping in the morning because it was exam week and my wife came in the house. She came in with a startle. I heard crying coming from our Bulgarian neighbors’ apartment. When my wife came into our apartment she had tears in her eyes. And it’s not the kind of crying that you hear at a khutbah, and it’s not the kind of crying when you lose your money or you find a parking ticket when you come out of class. It was the kind of crying that when I saw those tears, I knew that her father must have died. And she didn’t say it first, I even asked it. I said, "Has your father died?" And she said, "No,” and then she said, “Shaykh Bin Baz (rahimullahu ta’ala) passed away."
And subhan Allah, there is not a single family member of mine that I’ve cried for more than I cried for Shaykh Bin Baz - Rahimahullah. You’ll have your own uncle die and you won’t feel the sadness that someone would feel when Shaykh Bin Baz (rahimullahu ta’ala) died. Now that was the weekend, on Thursday, and on Friday every single Masjid in the entire kingdom gave their 1st Khutbah on the death of Shaykh bin Baz (rahimullahu ta’ala) because of all the lives that he had touched in his life. So it was a Friday and the sadness had swept all around Madinah al Munawwarah and all over the world.
I went to Masjid Qiblatain, and if you’ve been for ‘Umrah or you’ve gone for hajj, you’ve most likely passed by Masjid Qiblatain; that’s where I used to go for jumuah salah. There was a very eloquent imam who lived there, Shaykh Muhammad Ismail. His khutbahs were so powerful—and I actually learned a lot from his style of giving khutbahs—but he never cried in his khutbah. And I’ll say that that day he cried - a rare occasion. And the first half of the khutbah was about the virtue of the ‘ulema and the importance of seeking knowledge. The second half of the khutbah was about Shaykh Bin Baz specifically, rahimullahu ta’ala. When the shaykh announced the news, when he said, “The death of...” he started crying at that moment. And I noticed, and this is something that I picked out, that almost every single khateeb at the Ka’bah, all these places, when they would give the news of the death of the shaykh, rahmiullahu ta’ala, they would all start crying at that moment.
In fact, if you listen to “’Idaatul Quraan al Kareem,” which is a Quran station in Saudi Arabia, there’s a guy who is the announcer and very often they would do fatwa questions and answers; he was the one asking Shaykh Bin Baz the questions. And now on this day he was the one broadcasting the news of the janazah salaat at the Ka’bah. And he himself, on the radio, broke down, and he actually couldn’t perform his duty because of his crying on the radio. He couldn’t make the words come out.
Why am I saying this? It is a phenomenon in our community that we have a desire to learn about Islam, to learn about this deen. If we ask the question “Who wants to memorize the entire Qur’an?” almost everybody will raise their hands. And “Who wants to learn the Arabic language?” almost everybody will raise their hand. “Who wants to learn the fiqh of the deen?” everybody will raise their hands. And with that raising of the hand, good news will happen. You’ll say, “Oh, there is an Arabic class coming up, you’ll be able to fulfill your dreams!” They say, “Sorry about that, I’m a little bit busy you know,” and the hands come down. “And there’s a Qur’an class!” and they say, “Oh, you know, I have my exams coming up, I can’t really do it right now,” and the hands fall down.
So the question is, even though there is this thirst for knowledge, this thirst for learning the deen, why is it that we are not coming forward with the opportunity?” The table is set, and the invitation is sent out, and nobody comes to it. So if you want to come, come; and you’ll see two or three brothers studying. Come to another halaqa, you’ll see six, seven brothers studying. There will be studying here and studying there, but they are very few in comparison to how big our community is. Insha Allah, today I want to remind myself and you about the importance of seeking this knowledge of the deen.
Allah (Subhana wa Ta’ala) says, and indeed this is a very powerful statement being said in Surah Isra' 17/ 107-109:
“Say: Believe in it or do not believe.” It doesn’t matter; it’s all for you. And many times you’ll see so-and-so-actor become Muslim and it is as if we are so proud that they became Muslim. No, the pride is for that person who became Muslim. It’s them who will benefit from their eman.
Allah then says: “Indeed, those who were given knowledge before it - when it is recited to them, they fall upon their faces in prostration. / And they say, "Exalted is our Lord! Indeed, the promise of our Lord has been fulfilled." / And they fall upon their faces weeping, and Allah increases them in humble submission.”
Brothers and sisters, at the end of our classes we ask whether there are any questions, and many times the questions are, “Are marshmallows haram?” or “What about the moon-sighting issue?” or “Are mortgages—” and so on and so forth. Questions come like that. But an interesting person would ask a question and raise his hand.
He’d say, “Yaa shaykh, what is the ruling on seeking knowledge on the deen?” So I’m not going to tell you about what that shaykh would say, but I’m going to tell you what the Prophet (sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam) said about it. He said: “To seek knowledge of the deen is fard on every single Muslim.”
Let it sink in, that it is fard. No one is giving you the different rulings; the Prophet (sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam) is telling us that it is fard to seek knowledge of this deen.
Now, is everything of this entire deen fard? No, it is not, because no one will be able to encompass all of that knowledge. But the scholars have said that there are certain portions of the deen of which the person will not be left alone or not be forgiven if they didn’t know these things. And one of those things to know are the things that he is directly involved with, in his ibaadah. For example, wudu; a person has to make wudu for salah. A person cannot be Muslim, live his entire life as a Muslim, and say “Oh, I just never learned to do wudu for salah. He has to learn how to make wudu and it is fard to learn. He will actually be taken to account for not seeking how to make wudu.
And the same goes for salah. A person cannot say, “Oh, I’ve never learned Al-Fatiha, it’s been ten years and I never learned it, so I just recited it in English,” and so on. A person will not be excused for this. They have to learn it and it is fard for them to learn it.
The same thing goes for zakah, the same thing goes for hajj. See, many people, they just get on a plane and go for hajj. They do everything wrong and they don’t ask and at the end of hajj they say, “Yaa shaykh, I did this wrong, and I did this wrong, and I did this wrong,” and they will not be excused for that because they have to know, and they have to learn, and they have to get involved in these ‘ibaadaat.
Al-Hasan Al-Basree said about the one who learns and acts upon his knowledge: “He is beloved by Allah, a friend of Allah, the cream of Allah's creation. Out of the inhabitants of the earth, he is the most precious to Allah. He answered Allah's call and invited others day and night to answer Allah's call and then did good. And he announces to the world, 'I am a Muslim'. This is the Khaleefah of Allah on earth.”
Many aspects of knowledge are Fard on every single Muslim. While others are Fard Kifaa'ee – if a portion of the community fulfills the need then the sin is absolved off the community, otherwise the entire community is sinful.
Ibn Al-Jawzee (radi Allahu anhu) in his book Miftaah Daar as-Sa'aadah explains those aspects of knowledge which are fard for a person to learn. He mentions four:
Firstly, a person has to know Usool al-Eemaan al-Khamsah. He has to know the principles and the pinnacles of our belief and that would be encompassed in the statement: “Aamantu billahi wa malaaikatihi, wa kutubihi wa rusoolihi, wal Yawm al Akhir.” Those things, and those principles, a person has to know them.
Secondly, knowledge of the law of Islam; the Fard of that which a person must perform and we mentioned that about the salah and the zakah, but also similarly, if a person is dealing in his business, it is fard for him to know what is Islamically correct in his business transactions and what is not Islamically correct.
‘Umar would take a stick in his hand and ask people questions, and hit them if they didn’t know the proper ahkaam, rulings. And he would hit them in the marketplace if they didn’t know them. He said, “Whoever doesn’t know these rulings, he will eat riba’, whether he likes it or not; because of his ignorance, he will fall into it.”
Number three is that there are certain things that are haram which all the prophets have come with. As ibn Jawzee (rahim Allahu ta’ala) said, this is mentioned in the verse of Allah (Subhana wa Ta’ala): “Say: the things that my Lord has indeed forbidden are shameful deeds, whether open or secret; sins and trespasses against truth or reason; assigning partners to Allah, for which He has given no authority; and saying things about Allah of which you have no knowledge.” It is fard for a person to know this.
And the fourth thing he mentioned were those interactions of a person when he deals with his family. He has to know what is fard upon him in regards to taking care of his wife and in regards to his children. In fact, if a person didn’t do this, those children and that wife can take this man to the Muslim judge and he can force him and take this away from him, because it is fard that he know that this is the law of Allah (Subhana wa Ta’ala) upon him.
In the past, many times we go to a workshop here and a seminar there and a conference here and we come back satisfied that we got a little bit of knowledge, but this idea of being satisfied with what we have learned is not a characteristic of the people that came before us. Their satisfaction would never reach its fullest. They would always want to satisfy themselves more and more to get this knowledge.
Ibn Al-Jawzee said, "Let me tell you about my own situation. I am never content, saying to myself that I have read enough books. If I find a book which I haven't seen before,” notice he says seen, not read, “it is as if I have stumbled upon a pot of gold." Like those rainbows they say you just follow and you’ll get the pot of gold, they’re always looking for that luck; this is the pot of gold that he would find, the treasure chest: when he would find a book that he has never seen before.
Subhan Allah, when we don’t see this sort of drive towards the knowledge, it could be the sins of our very community that are holding us back; it could actually be putting a wall between us from moving forward and studying this deen, learning it, and acting upon it.
There’s a statement of Ibn Mas'ood (rahim Allah). He said:
“I think that a person could forget the knowledge that he's learnt because of his sin.”
And indeed, as mentioned in Tabaqaat Al-Hanafiyyah 2/487, when Abu Haneefah had a question that he could not figure out, he would say to his students, "This forgetfulness is due to nothing other then a sin I have committed." So when he had a mental block in his halaqa he would say “Astaghfir Allah.” He would ask Allah ta'ala for forgiveness, or he would get up in the middle of a halaqa, leave the students, and go pray, hoping that Allah would forgive him. Then, when the issue would become clear to him, he would become happy and say, "It is my good news that perhaps Allah has forgiven me."
This was told to Al-Fudayl ibn Iyaad, and when he heard this he began to weep and commented, "This is because of the upright life that he lives. As for others, they would not realize this." Abu Haneefah understood it but few people do, that this is where the mental block comes from, from our sins.
And the people before us would spend their money in seeking this knowledge. Often, a number of classes were free and you would think that the people would come to the halaqa more, but that is not the case. You would think that if there is a charge on the class they think, “I’m going to pay money to learn about Islam,” and the numbers would lessen. But this is not the case. In the past they would spend their wealth in this cause. In fact, they might even spend their homes so their children could go study the deen.
The scholar Alee ibn Aasim said, "(When I was young) My father gave me 100,000 dirhams”—Do you know what kind of car you could buy with 100,000 dirhams? I don’t know, but insha Allah, it might be a pretty good one—“and he said, 'Take this money and go; I don’t want to see your face until you replace this 100,000 dirhams with 100,000 ahadith. Until then, we don’t know you and you don’t know us."
And they would ignite in happiness when they would learn something new:
From Al-Bidaayah wan-Nihaayah we learn of Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Ahmad An-Nasafee —and this was the case of many of the scholars, that they lived lives in poverty— he lived in such poverty that his son asked, “When are we going to relax in this poverty that we are in?” So he went to sleep one night in sadness and depression due to the poverty and need and the debts that he owed. As he sat there in his sadness, suddenly, his mind went on a tangent and an issue of Fiqh, which had caught him, came to his mind and suddenly he knew the solution to it. So he jumped up in the middle of the darkness cheering and shouting, just like we say “who’s the man?” he said, "Ayn Al-Mulook! " His wife thought he must have had one of these million-dollar-schemes to get all the money so she asked him, “What happened?” He said, “Don’t you realize that I have just figured out the solution to this fiqh issue?” And she was shocked at all this happiness. Even though they were in the state they were in he was happy because Allah opened up this issue for him.
It took Abu Ubaid Qaasim ibn Salaam 40 years to write his book Ghareeb Al-Hadeeth. In explaining the days when he was writing the book, he says: “Perhaps - while listening to some scholars I may benefit one point, a gem, from what they said and then hurry home to write it in the proper chapter of the book. After that I would spend the entire night with a grin on my face. I would sleep with a smile in utter happiness because of that point I just benefited.”
And we’ve all heard of Nawawee and others’ books that are so long that if we ever opened them, we would never finish them. Where did they get the time to learn the knowledge and write it? And I’m saying we could never read it, only cover to cover, forget even writing! Imam Nawawee (rahim Allahu ta’ala) didn't go to the library and just have the knowledge evaporate into his head. He said he used to make dua for the knowledge, and this is true, but you have to make the dua and follow it up with actions, and insha Allah, Allah will bless you.
In his schooling days, Imam Nawawee used to attend 12 halaqas or classes every day, from morning to evening. And they weren’t really the type of feel-good-halaqas where the people would go back without having really written anything. You can see the knowledge that he gained from every single class.
I remember in Madinah University there was a student who used to sleep in class. He didn’t pay, he got scholarships, so he would just sleep in class. We had five classes a day, five days a week, so that is twenty-five classes a week and this guy slept for twenty-five classes a week, for every single week of the entire year. And I joke not; I exaggerate not; if anyone comes from Saudi Arabia, they know that people like this exist. In the final class before the final exam, there is always a designated person to ask the teacher to make the exams easy. There is always someone who would confront the teacher and make a big deal out of it. So our tawheed teacher came in and this guy woke up and said, “Khaffaf, yaa shaykh,” “Make it easy for us, yaa shaykh.” So the shaykh didn’t really know who this guy was and he felt kind of shy, he was put on the spot, and he was trying to make excuses saying, “You know, it is not in our hands, the universities make us make it hard,” and so on. But this guy—and this was the only class he was ever awake in—he didn’t even give it up; after he made that statement, he went to sleep. So the shaykh is talking and it turns out that guy is asleep, so he started knocking on the table. He said, “No sleeping, oh he who is looking for an easy exam, wake up.” It was a valuable lesson; if you want your exams to be easy, then you have to wake up.
A poet once related the story of a woman, who, unlike some of the sisters of our time, used to get mad at her husband for spending all his money on books and spending everything in his right hand to buy these books. One day her husband said, “Just leave me alone. Perhaps in these books I will find a book that will help me to take my book in my right hand on the Day of Judgment.”
Aqooloo qawli haadha wastaghfir Allahi liyakum wa lisaan al muslimeena wal muslimaat, astaghfir Allahu innahu huwa ghafoor ar-raheem.