Assalaamu ‘Alaykum Warahmatullaah Wabarakaatuh!
إن الحمد لله نحمده ونستعينه ونستغفره ونستهديه والصلاة والسلام علي رسول الله وعلي آله وصحبه وسلم!
إن الحمد لله نحمده ونستعينه ونستغفره ونستهديه والصلاة والسلام علي رسول الله وعلي آله وصحبه وسلم!
Indeed, all praise is due to Allah. We praise Him, seek refuge with Him, and seek His Forgiveness. We seek refuge with Allah from the evils of our souls, and the mistakes in our actions. Whoever Allah Guides, there is none who can misguide him, and whoever Allah misguides, there is none who can guide him. And I testify that there is none worthy of being worshipped except Allāh, and I testify that Muhammad (peace be upon him) is his servant and Messenger.
As for what follows; we want to remind ourselves that for a student to attain a sound knowledge, he must have a good character or manner. If not, he will end up not reaching his aims and objectives. And having a good manner is a very important step in Learning the Din. The student must strive hard to guide the hukm of Allah and follow the sunnah of the messenger of Allah salallaahu alayhi wasallam.
Shaykh Al jalil Al zaahid said
كن للأوامر والنواهى حافظا
وعلى الصلاة مواظبا ومحافظا
واطلب علوم الشرع واجهد واستعن
بالطيبات تصر فقيها حافظا
Meaning:
Guide the do and don’t of the sharia *** and be steadfast to prayers and guide its time.
Seek the knowledge of the sharia and strive hard and seek assistance * * * by taking the lawful food, by so doing, you will become a great scholar, an Hafiz.
Knowledge is the worship of the heart, the secret of its life, and the source of its power, it is a must for its seeker to come to know the manners related to it, and to strive his utmost to obtain this manners. Otherwise, he will be going in one direction, and knowledge will be going in another, as it was said: It went east, and you went west * What a difference there is between the east and west!
One should also realize that these manners are not like any other manners, where it is the same whether you obtain them or not, or that they are all of one level. Rather, some of them are obligatory upon everyone, everywhere, whether or not they are students of knowledge. The purpose of attaining knowledge of the Sharī’ah is to perfect one’s clarity of expression and understanding, and the purpose of perfecting one’s clarity of expression is to single out Allah and worship Him.
Therefore, the purpose of seeking knowledge is to single out Allah and worship Him alone, and the message gets across much better when the one who has positioned himself to deal with this knowledge whether he is a student or teacher clearly shows these signs on himself first by singling out Allah and worshipping Him through submitting completely to the pure Shari’a.
Based on this, the manners of seeking this knowledge are completely inseparable from the person who deals with it, because this is what the texts show, and because these manners include vast principles of the Religion that are not within anybody’s luxury to contradict or look to without taking it serious. And these manners are at all times a definite obligation upon the seeker of knowledge, and Allah is the source of help, and upon Him is all reliance.
Moreover, in the past, most scholars would train their students in good manners before teaching them Islamic knowledge.
Parents, too, would encourage their children to learn manners before learning the Islamic sciences. Unfortunately, today many institutes do not teach good manners to their students, but expecting them to automatically gain them through their study of Islam. This leads to Islamic teachers or scholars with bad manners, which in turn chases or sends people away from Islam. Otherwise, we might do more harm than good and cause fitna to the ummah as a whole. We need to beware oh beloved ummah of Islam.
What follows is a collection of the manners or qualities that the seeker of knowledge must abide with. As we have stated, today’s topic is on the. QUALITIES OR MANNERS OF A GOOD STUDENT IN ISLAMIC CONTEXT
We ask Allah for His assistance, succor and guidance and to also see us through the halqah inshaa Allah.
1. PURIFIED HEART
A good student of knowledge seeks Islamic knowledge mainly in order to please and seek the pleasure of Allah(may He be exalted), not to show off so that he can attain a worldly reputation. He always Purify himself Inwardly and Outwardly From That Which Contradicts the Shari’a. He steer up clearly of innovations, beautifying himself with the sunnan of the Messenger of Allāh (peace be upon him) in all aspects of his life, preserving his wudū’, and keeping his body and appearance clean– all within reasonable means, and as much as he is able.
He does not seek knowledge in order to earn material gains, praises and love from people.
If Allah is pleased with him, he is very much happy even though people might hate him because he always seek knowledge and works with what he learnt.
He is very sure of his path that is going to lead him to Jannah because of that hadith where the Messenger of Allah salallaahu alayhi wasallam said:” whosoever follows a path, seeking for Islamic knowledge, Allah will make Jannah easy for him”
Ibn Ismail said:
من طلب العلم للمعاد*** فاز بفضل من الرشاد
فيا لخسران طالبيه*** لنيل فضل من العباد
Meaning:
Whosoever seek knowledge because of his hereafter*** he will have a great reward from Allah-the Almighty
What a great lost! For the one who seek the knowledge * * * in order to attain praise and gratitude from mankind.
Any student that have a purified heart shows that the student is a good student and is going to be successful at the end inshaa Allah.
2. CLEAR & DEFINED GOALS.
This type of student has a clear sense of what he is seeking for and he has already defined what his goals are for seeking Islamic knowledge. What he is trying to achieve are also well defined. He knows that he has to try hard to understand what he is learning so that he will be able to teach others in order to have More rewards from Allah.
3. PUTTING THE KNOWLEDGE IN PRACTICE.
This is one of the most important qualities of a good student of knowledge. He always hasten to practice what he learns no matter how small it is. For he knows that knowledge without practice is just like a donkey carrying a huge amount of books on his back and the books thereof have benefit him for nothing.
Abu Darda once said:
“I am not afraid that it will be said to me : “Oh Aamir what have you learnt?”, but I am more concerned that it will be said to me : “Oh Aamir , what have you done with what you have learnt!”
He also Knows that acting upon what he knows is the fruit of knowledge. Whoever knows but does not act upon his knowledge is like the Jews whom Allaah has likened to the ugliest things in the Qur’an.
4. PATIENCE
A student of knowledge must have this quality in order for him to attain his goals. My dear ummah, seeking knowledge is one of the highest of pursuits, and height cannot be scaled except by working hard and striving with great determination.
Abu Tamaam said while he was addressing himself:
“Let me scale the height that cannot be scaled, for reaching high things is difficult while reaching low things is easy. You want to scale the height without any effort, but honey cannot be gathered without bee stings.”
Another poet said:
“You seek to attain glory, and those who seek to attain glory Strive their utmost and roll up their sleeves for that purpose. They strive hard but most of them become tired. But those who have patience and perseverance attain the heights of the glory that they desired. Do not think that attaining glory is as easy as eating dates; You cannot attain glory until you swallow the bitterest medicine”.
So a good student of knowledge must have the quality of Patience and perseverance. If jihad requires an hour of patience, then the seeker of knowledge must be patient until the end of his life.
5. TIME CONSCIOUSNESS
There are many people out there that believes in the popular saying “Time is Gold.”
Time in Islam is more than Gold or any precious material thing in this world. Of all religions, only Islam guides mankind not only to the importance of time but also how to value it and to also utilize it to attain Jannah in the hereafter. Allah the Almighty tells us the value of time, why we must not waste it and how we can make use of our time wisely to increase our imaan (Faith) and thus attain success in this dunya and especially eternal success in the life hereafter.
A student must have this important quality, he must not waste his time unnecessarily. Similarly, a student of knowledge must have time to strive to find a lawful job, seeking pure earnings and refraining from begging is all form of worship.
We live in a time where there is no waqaf at the moment to assist student to study very easy without striving to find any job to sustain them through their studies. But does it mean the student should constantly engage himself in this, so much so that it hinders him from congregational prayers, joining ties of relationship, learning about Islam and inviting to Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala? Off course NO. Rather, he looks into the matter, and if one job is enough for him, there is no need for a second one. This means as a student of knowledge, he must maximize his time to his best ability. If one shift suffices your needs, don’t take another in overtime, and if you are able to cut the number of hours you work, don’t hesitate.
This is intended for the self employed and their likes, it is not meant by this that people should evade their duties at work, as this is Islamically impermissible.
We have already exit our stipulated time and we are sorry for that. We will in shaa Allah pause here.
Questions and Answer
Answer @ as:
May Allah have mercy on you @as. There are many books that have been written by scholars on this topic. One of them is “hilyatul thalib ilm “. Inshaa Allah you will find the qualities there.
الحمد لله أولا وآخرا
May Allah enable us to witness many more blessed Halqah and grant us His pleasure.
Assalamu alaykum warahmatullahi
