Going to Extremes over What Is Indispensable:

Yet what we have observed—and continue to observe—is that unbridled, boundless zeal produces a host of negative consequences, one of which is excess in matters that are in fact unavoidable. The duties that are truly indispensable fall into two categories:

1. The individual obligation (farḍ ʿayn), which every Muslim must personally fulfill.
2. The communal obligation (farḍ kifāyah), which, once some members of the community have discharged it, is lifted from the remainder.

Accordingly, we may not treat a communal obligation as though it were an individual one, regarding the two as equal in ruling.

Even if we were to concede—solely for the sake of argument—that rising students of knowledge must be acquainted with fiqh al-wāqiʿ (a juristic grasp of present-day realities), that statement cannot be applied wholesale to the senior scholars of the Muslim community, much less can we compel every student of knowledge to master contemporary realities and the detailed jurisprudence that follows from such awareness, assigning to each situation its proper ruling.