Reading Books of Scholars

12-3-2001 | IslamWeb

Question:

I am in a dilemma whether to read and follow the book written by Sheikh Qaradawi "The Halal and Haram in Islam". I came to know it had some weak Hadith. Please help me in this regard. The second part of the question is what should we do if we are in a situation like this where the ahle-ilm (the family of learned/knowledgeable people) sometime misguide a common man. This is happening so much these days, that every other aalim is giving and issuing fatawas. In a situation like this what should one do?

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Answer:

All perfect praise be to Allah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allah, and that Muhammad is His slave and Messenger.

Dr. Yusuf Al-Qaradawi's book entitled Al-Halaal wal-Haraam fil-Islaam (The Lawful and the Unlawful in Islam) is a book of science and jurisprudence which contains the opinions of its author about some Sharee’ah issues which he thoroughly searched. These opinions are like any other opinions issued by any scholar and which can be right or wrong. So, we think that there is no harm in reading it and reading the books of the scholars who did not agree with Dr. Al-Qaradawi concerning his Fataawa over some of the issues he dealt with in this book, so that the reader could see the right from the wrong and the more sound from the less sound.

As for the Ahadeeth contained in this book, they stem from sound to good, to Ahadeeth which are doubtful from the point of view of some of the scholars of Hadeeth.

To conclude, this book is like the other books of scholars. None of these books should be taken as complete and right or as bad and useless. Some of these books are mostly sound, others are less than that.

But the basis for all is: first, the strength of the evidence and its soundness; second, a good understanding of the evidence and how it is used as well as the objectives of the Sharee’ah and what it intends to establish.

Allah knows best.