peace and blessings be upon him: “Whoever goes out on campaign aiming only for a camel-hobble will have nothing but what he intended.” (1)

You will see that this sort of person never draws light from knowledge, has no weight in people’s hearts, and his learning produces little in the way of deeds; for the true scholar is only the one who fears Allah, Exalted is He.

Another group attained knowledge, were given high posts because of it, then acted unjustly, abandoned the restraints of learning, and plunged into major sins and obscenities. Away with them—such people are no scholars!

Some did not fear Allah in their learning; instead they adopted legal stratagems, issued permissive fatwas, and transmitted anomalous reports.

Others dared to fabricate hadiths; Allah disgraced them, their knowledge vanished, and it became but fuel for the Fire.

All of these categories reported a large amount of knowledge and, in general, drank deeply from it; yet those who succeeded them were a generation whose deficiency in both knowledge and practice became apparent.

After them came people who outwardly laid claim to learning but had mastered only a trifling portion. With that paltry amount they gave the impression of being distinguished scholars, yet it never occurred to them that they might draw near to Allah through it, for they had never seen a shaykh who could be emulated. They thus became ignorant rabble: the height of one of their “teachers’” ambitions is to acquire a few costly books, store them away, leaf through them some day, mispronounce what he cites, and fail to grasp it.

So we ask Allah for deliverance and pardon, just as one of them said, “I am no scholar, nor have I ever seen a scholar.”

Hishām ibn Abī ʿAbdillāh was indeed among the leading imams, were it not that his learning was blemished by the doctrine of qadar.

The ḥāfiẓ Muḥammad ibn al-Barqī (2) said: “I asked Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn, ‘What do you say about someone who is accused…’”