Abdur Rahman ibn Yusuf Mangera – Studying Sacred Knowledge What is Your Intention (Hadith Commentary from Zad alTalibin)

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