with insight.

Allah, the Exalted, says, “Say: ‘Are those who know equal to those who do not know?’” and He also says, “Allah will raise in rank those of you who believe and those who have been given knowledge.”

Commentary
The author, Imam an-Nawawi (d. 676 AH), states in his book Riyad al-Salihin, under the chapter “The Excellence of Knowledge—learning it and teaching it for Allah’s sake.” We have already mentioned something about knowledge and clarified that the praiseworthy knowledge for which there is reward is knowledge of Allah’s law, along with whatever serves as a means to it—such as grammar, morphology, and the like—for these are merely means, and the scholars have said: “The means take the rulings of their ends.”

Sacred knowledge is divided into two categories. The first is fard ʿayn (an individual obligation) that every person must learn. The second is fard kifayah (a collective obligation); if a sufficient number undertake it the duty is lifted from the rest. A third category branches from the second and is deemed sunnah (recommended): once the collective obligation has been met, its pursuit becomes recommended for the remaining people.

As for the knowledge that is fard ʿayn, it is that each person learn whatever he needs for the obligatory matters of his religion—such as learning about tawḥid (monotheism) and understanding everything that opposes or contradicts it, in all its forms of shirk, whether obvious or hidden, minor or major. This is incumbent upon everyone: each individual must know Allah’s oneness and single Him out in what is exclusively His, exalted is He. The same applies to the prayer; it is obligatory upon every person and never falls from a Muslim so long as his intellect remains sound. Therefore he must learn it, together with the purification that it requires