Abdur Rahman ibn Yusuf Mangera – Studying Sacred Knowledge What is Your Intention (Hadith Commentary from Zad alTalibin)
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The next Hadith which is related by mama Gouda with a blue mage
anymore, I haven't had these number 225 When Darla Melman mimma
up the hobby he went through Allah, Allah Allahu Allah, you'll
see by our autumn minute dunya let me aged out of an agenda to multi.
The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, Whoever seeks
knowledge, actually, that knowledge by which the pleasure of
Allah is sought, meaning sacred knowledge. So this will, this
particular Hadees will not relate to anything else.
Meaning any other type of knowledge, worldly knowledge as
such, because the virtue in the sacred knowledge is what makes it
so special. So you don't want to be doing it for the wrong reason.
So, if somebody is using the virtue
of the sacred knowledge, the one by which the pleasure of Allah
subhanaw taala, is sought only to acquire some worldly gain, he will
not smell the fragrance of paradise on the Day of Judgment.
Meaning, he's still a Muslim, everything is still they still a
believer, but there's some shortcoming. They're not smelling
the fragrance of paradise means that you won't even get close.
Because normally, the fragrance of something could be smelled from a
distance. So saying that you won't even smell it means that you won't
even get close.
And that is quite a warning.
Now, what
a question that could arise here is many scholars, especially
nowadays, as opposed to in the early days,
well, even then, they were paid by the hour off, which means the
endowment funds that people are set up, they were still being
paid.
There's very few relatives who work without pay. Right?
Throughout history, it's very difficult, unless you have your
own business. For example, I just spoke to a scholar just several
days ago, and mashallah, the family has a great business. And
there's one or two brothers who are not orlimar, they run the
business, but they all get paid. Because maybe the father had
started the business. The father is also a scholar and two of the
brothers are scholars. So even though they may be acting as a
teacher in a mother Assad, they may be doing leading solids and
present as an imam in a mosque. And as a director. They don't,
they're not employed as such for payment, because they've got their
own resource. But not everybody can do that. And that's why
initially, especially in the Hanafi school, it was actually
prohibited to take payment for any religious service. According to
the original Hanafi school, the it's prohibited to take payment
for leading solids, and for
any religious practice like that, that has to be done as a ritual.
However, later on the rhythm, I looked at the situation that they
were no longer very good outcome. So endowment that would take care
of scholars, because before wealthy people, religious people,
righteous people, they would make these endowments these kings,
these rulers, these Khalifa, these governors, they would set up these
endowments, the Mamelukes, the salad Jukes, the Abbasids, they
would, they would set up these endowments, that Okay, in this
endowment, somebody's going to administrate this endowment. I
mean, colleges do that nowadays, Harvard, Princeton, these places
that have these major endowments, but essentially what it is, is
that somebody's given them a huge amount of money, or they've
developed, they've
gathered a huge amount of money, and they're now investing it. So
there's somebody who's doing the investments of these things, and,
and then the whole setup is running through that. So they're
kind of self sufficient, in a sense, but it's an ongoing
process. So what it could be is that, okay, this is an endowment.
This is a building that's dedicated for this. This is a
piece of land, any any produce from here, any profits that come
from this land, or this business will go to the relevant of this
madrasah.
Right, well, we'll go to the URL amount of the city. So there used
to be numerous endowments like that, but later on them, I saw
that these things weren't as prevalent as it used to be. So
then they allowed that
people be paid for this for these activities for these duties as
such. The Shafi is in the Shafi school it was fine from before, to
be paid for religious, religious
activities like that.
Now, in this case, what we're speaking about here is whoever
seeks that knowledge by which the pleasure of Allah is sought only
to acquire some worldly gain, he'll not smell the fragrance of
paradise. What happens when you are employed somewhere, as a
teacher, for example, even teaching Islamic studies, where
you're a teacher and others are teaching something else, where
you've just, you know, gone somewhere studied knowledge, and
now, the, there's nobody else in your community more qualified than
you, and you are told to go and give hotbars and you're going to
be paid as an Imam, for example.
Or whatever the case is, you're you're told to teach a class once
a month, once a week or something, and you're going to be paid for
that. So
on the one hand, let's just say that you have to teach a class on
a particular subject, which you don't have much knowledge about,
you can go and research it, you have some knowledge about it. But
for you to develop a class that then you'd have to go and look,
look into the commentaries and have to go and research. Right,
let's just say you were told to teach a class on the laws of
purity, there's very few people who can just sit down and start
teaching, most people are going to go and have to look at their notes
from the classes that they had studied, they're gonna have to
refresh their knowledge, they're going to have to go and look for
other possible questions that might arise so that they're
prepared to respond to them in the class. So essentially, you're
really learning all of these things to hold this class, right,
which is going to become part of your livelihood.
Because you need an income, you've just been employed, you've just
been appointed as this teacher, but you're going to be paid for
that.
Now, what is the purpose of your knowledge? Are you only studying
these things just purely for the sake of teaching this class? Why
are you teaching this class? Is it only to earn a living? Right? Is
it only to make some money. So all of these factors will play into
what how Allah subhanaw taala would see this, the the best
intention in these kinds of things is that if you are what they say,
man whom and film, there are two people who the practice of law
some said will never be satiated. One is the person who's after
wealth. And the other one is the person who's after knowledge, you
will want knowledge until the last day, and never be satisfied with
it is greedy for knowledge. If you're one of those people, then
you're probably fine. What you're not completely fine, because there
are other intentional hurdles that you have to deal with. But at
least you're not doing it just for that class. You like knowledge you
want to study, you probably wanted to study that topic before. Right?
For example, when I'm, normally when I'm invited to give a speech,
I really don't like it when they say you can speak about whatever
you want. That's probably the most difficult thing. Because I hate to
just speak about the same thing over and over again, I don't
normally like to do that. I like them to give me a topic, give me a
challenge. I'll go and research it. Because when you go somewhere,
and somebody is inviting you to talk, they know more about what's
needed in that area than what you think you need. You may be
speaking about,
for example,
a topic which they've just had covered last week, or it's already
been covered, the whole course has been done on it. So you'd rather
that they tell you to do something, and you have to go and
research and prepare it for that purpose. I think that's always
better. So now, if you are interested in learning new things
all the time anyway, so you don't have to worry about that you're
not going to learn it just purely for the sake of being paid for it.
So the intention should be that I'm helping myself and these
people, I'm increasing my knowledge, I can become better and
I can help these people because it's woman, Dara Illa, who I mean
asylee her that the person was inviting to Allah, whatever you
teach of sacred knowledge, it's going to be the invitation to
Allah subhanaw taala woman accidental Colima, Dara Illa,
Allah He Well, I mean aside, you have more clutter in the Nieminen
Muslimeen who is there better than the one who invites people to
Allah? This is a method of Dawa. Although you're speaking to the
converted, but there's a level there's always a level higher.
There's a never ending hierarchy here. So yes, you're not speaking
to people who are totally off the track necessarily. You may be
talking to people who are there purposely for that for that
knowledge. But still, they're there because they don't know they
want to improve, they want to increase they want to enhance
themselves. So you're still inviting people to Allah subhanaw
taala that should be your intention, even though a secondary
intention is there that inshallah bitis Allah subhanaw taala will
also give me some livelihood the purpose should not be that I'm
going to take that when I'm because that pays a lot more
money.
Now, there is a bit of a dilemma here in the sense that let's just
say you do need the money you you have to survive.
And some days they're not they're not well off. I mean,
Many retirees are not well off. So you need the money, and one place
wants to pay you, but it's not going to be enough for you to
survive the other place. Well, that's fine. But your intention
primarily, and this is something you have to consciously do.
Because when the money is there, and it's important for you, then
you have to subdue that, because no one is going to come anyway.
Because that's not in your contract. Meaning your intention
is not in your contract with those people, your contract with the
people that I'm going to teach for this long, this is what we're
going to cover. That's your contract with them. It's not the
contract between you and Allah that really matters most. So once
your contract is made with the people, your intention to Allah
subhanaw taala, shouldn't be straight. And intending to Allah
subhanho wa Taala is that Oh Allah, I'm doing this for your
sake, I did not gain this knowledge to earn money with. But
this is one method of me doing my work, being in a good environment.
And,
and also gaining some benefit for myself benefiting other people in
sha Allah and making my living. But the primary intention
shouldn't be pure. And regardless of what your intention is, your
money is going to come in because you've taught the class. So
there's no need to make that your primary intention between you and
Allah subhanaw taala. Because that is already contracted, that's
already agreed upon, in terms of what you're going to make.
The difficulty comes is that if you're, if you're in those who are
speakers will go and invite to different places. Sometimes people
want to pay you something. In fact, some period in place that
actually say, How much is your honorarium? How much would you
charge? And some speakers who do this, and they don't do anything
else, they they quite, you know, they will say, they have
permissibility, for that, that this is how much we charge because
it's going to take us a whole day to come out and do this fly and
come out, you know, and so on and so forth. And there's other people
who will say, Well, you just pay our travel cost. If you feel like
you want to give us something, it's up to you or not, then it
depends on your intention at the end of the day.
Right, if that's how you want to do it, then it depends on your
intention. Now, if you go to some places and they pay you some
places, pay you some places will not pay you anything. The test
will be that if the place that doesn't normally pay you
any honorarium as such without you asking for it, will you go back
there or not?
If they invited you again.
So, why are you going there in the first place?
And will you go back there again.
So, the intention should not be any of these things, as the
primary intention
has been basally Rahmatullah here already. One sort of man
performing some tricks on top of a hill.
And he said,
he is better than some of our colleagues, because at least he is
earning his livelihood
through these worldly tricks,
whereas our college or sorry, our colleagues, they are acquiring the
religion. Sorry, they are acquiring this world through their
religion.
People he knew who he thought were just studying sacred knowledge,
just to
get people to pay them.
Because maybe from from gifts or endowments, or whatever the story
was.
That's why it's related by one of the great bulky scholars who he
saw a beggar with his hands outstretched reading the Quran.
You go to places like Egypt and other places you'll actually see
this the guy with a beautiful voice, you know, he's reading
like, Chef Coriell Bassett, right? Abdul Basit, and
you know, his his, by the subway station or something like that.
And people are paying him you know, you hear you got in the
London tube you've got guys with come up with their guitar and
start playing guitar and they've got this guitar case open people
are throwing money in there, something like that. It's a very
bad thing to do that you read Quran to earn your living with
like that.
So what he did was he he took some dust or something and put it into
his hand
is that this is totally wrong. You shouldn't be doing this
we don't know the person's intention though.
The person is not outstretching as any just sitting there reading
Quran because that's the only thing and do sometimes they blind.
That may be a different story. People are just paying and maybe a
different story depends on the intention. We can't just people's
intention. But sometimes it just looks off
While it is impermissible to do the work of the Hereafter for
acquiring possessions of this world such as teaching Hadith to
win the hearts of men, it's not blameworthy according to the
scholars to acquire the world in a lawful way
to free oneself for the word of the Hereafter.
And it says he will not smell that is considered an exaggeration to
deter a person from doing this.
Allah subhanaw taala could forgive a person for another reason and
send them to paradise. It's not that he's going to be deprived of
paradise forever. It may be that initially you can't go there such
a person and then go afterwards. May Allah subhanaw taala grant us
a class in whatever knowledge that we have and in the way we
disseminate our knowledge