With regard to this...

With regard to this, Imam al-Sadiq ( ‘a ) states: “Seventy sins of an ignorant man will be forgiven before one sin of a scholar is forgiven…”[^2] It ought not to be imagined that quitting education is better in order not to be worse off than the ignorant, because one who fled from acquiring knowledge and awareness will be asked too [why they did so] and responsibility will not be divested of him because of his taking flight from education.

In addition to that, why ought we not to be among those scholars who act upon their knowledge and will get envied in the hereafter in the same way that other people used to envy them in the world?

In our sources of hadith , a great deal of sections with different titles have been recorded with regard to the virtue of acquiring knowledge, to the extent that it has been recorded in some of the hadith s that even the birds of the air and the fish of the sea and the animals of the wilderness all seek Allah’s forgiveness for a person who is seeking divine knowledge.

For every reason His Holiness’ sates in this section that a scholar whose actions are not in accord with his knowledge will be in the worst position and rank on the Day of Resurrection and will not smell the sweet scent of paradise.

All too often [it occurs that] a person who embarks upon acquisition of knowledge initially does so with the intention of serving the religion and discharging his obligations but encumbrances crop up along the way; However, some people do not have a divine intention and objective from the beginning. Not only do they lack sincerity, but have ill-intentions as well, like acquiring knowledge for the sake of attracting other people’s attention and respect and acquiring social rank and popularity.

It is natural that right from the beginning such an individual is heading towards deviation and collapse and consequently gets entangled in the filth of meanness and misery and will not smell the scent of paradise on the Day of Resurrection.

It is likely that a person who goes to learn secular knowledge for the sake of attaining position, opportunity and the acquisition of daily bread does not get reproached and blamed, but a person who learns divine sciences, which have been designed for the prosperity of the hereafter, for the sake of attaining the world deserves to be castigated. In reality, such an individual believes that the position and status of the world is higher than that of the hereafter.