Can I add my name? Well, totally. Not for you, Rachel. Oh, yeah, thanks. Welcome, folks, to the, well, we're squeaking one more in in May. This is the 31st of May, 2023, Aries Working Group call. And today we're gonna talk, this is a important conversation, but as it relates to the open wallet conversation, but mildly peripheral, we're anticipating a presentation from them next week on more of a formal proposal. And so today is a little bit of background stuff that came out of last week's conversation about what, about what exactly Aries is, et cetera. And I think that we'll have some sort of good general conversation today, but without necessarily pressure of evaluating a specific proposal, and that will provide some useful conversation for further topics we'll have. So thank you for coming. This is a hyper allergic call. So the antitrust policy and the code of conduct are in effect. Please be mindful of those and please raise any concerns you have, either to Stephen Curran or I, or to hyper ledger leadership generally, and we can get those things corrected. You're welcome to add yourself the attendees list now that I finally published the page. Again, the link is in the group or is in the Zoom chat for the link to today's agenda. Is anyone here new or would otherwise like to introduce themselves to the group before we get going? Alex, your hands up. Was that for that or something else? It was for that, yeah. Hello everybody. Alex Metcalf here with the governor of British Columbia. John has brought me in. I do a lot of communications and marketing work and I'm gonna contribute some time towards the great ship that is Aries and I think there's many aspects I could help with with the chunk of time I've got from summarizing and having a perspective on the decision around the Wallet Foundation through to how we better communicate the benefits of what we do to people coming into various levels. So happy to help out, happy to be here and I'll just listen mostly for today and be catching up a lot but I may have some questions ongoing. Fantastic. I also want to give a nod here to Helen and Tim. Tim and Helen work for DCO but Helen also serves as the marketing chair. Helen, I'm getting that right of Hyperledger. Yeah, I was elected the Hyperledger marketing chair by the membership. So I represent the sort of dues paying members who are part of the foundation and help support the overall kind of guide the ship along with Ben who is on the call who is actually the Hyperledger communication staff person in charge of all things marketing. So, hey Ben, you can introduce yourself as well.  Sorry, I didn't mean to jump the queue there. I don't know at all. No worries, thanks everyone. Actually sorry, I didn't realize you on the call Helen and yes, I'm Ben Thomas. I run marketing and communications five pleasure foundation and Helen kindly asked me to join the call today to answer any questions in relation to Hyperledger areas branding and possibly provide an updates on the developments of a new brand that we're rolling out soon and a new website. Yes, and so the reason I wanted to sort of call that out was I, this is normally of course a developer focus group but I appreciate those with other skills that clearly we need that are around and involved and knowledgeable in all those things. And so hats off to those of you who are looking to assist and make our work more visible and approachable. And so I super appreciate that. Excellent, others that would like to introduce themselves. Okay, appreciate everyone being here. On the announcements we have coming up in like next week I believe is the Dice Europe. Did I do that right? Yes, this is next week Dice Europe. And then we have the hackathon and the non-creds workshop, which is today actually. And is this at A.M. Mountain? Is there's maybe a reason that Steven's not here if that is going. Pacific I think. What's that? The Pacific. Pacific. This happens the hour following this one. Yeah. Excellent. So if you're looking for something to do in less than 60 minutes, then here's your link for a non-creds workshop. Any other announcements that we should have? Awesome, are there any pressing release status or work update topics that folks want to float today? I'm hoping to save as much time as we can for the main topic. Thank you for all the work that all the folks do. That's what keeps this everything alive and it's often under-recognized even in this group. So we appreciate your work. So this is a little messy. This is the stuff that I'm adding at the top and I'm sort of cumulative of keeping some notes as it relates. And so this is the relatively the new section of the agenda here with the other stuff brought along to sort of have the notes all in one spot without having to jump to five or six pages. And so what I wanted to do today was talk about the terms wallet and the term wallet and the term agent and how they interplay. And then there's some a little bit of observation that I would like to share from my perspective about sort of focus of work. And I think that that will be helpful in a way to do that. Are there other topics that we want to address prior to getting into this conversation or in addition to getting into this conversation? Okay, I want to nod real quick and say that the did peer, one of the other conversations we've got going on is the transition away from unqualified dids. And there's, in that vein, the did peer method three which is a short more efficient version that you can drive from a did peer method two has been merged into that spec. So I appreciate all the work that has been done there. And that's good. Okay, let me tackle these actually slightly out of order. Let me talk about some observations that I have that I think are relevant to sort of the focus that we have as a group because I think it's an interesting, there's some interesting color here that I don't know exactly what to conclude from but it's something that has become really obvious to me over the past couple of months. And I'd love to share thoughts there and then we can have some more open conversation as it relates to things that got right or didn't get right in those observations. And then the term agent versus wallet which I don't really, that's not intended to start an old argument for argument's sake, but rather to talk about kind of what the terms mean as a way of exploring sort of the scope and the meaning of the work that we are engaged in. And so, okay, let's charge ahead and if we, and if anyone has suggestions on how to modify the agenda or topics to do then I appreciate those all along. Sometimes these, hopefully these conversations go in unexpected ways which can help us with the understanding of what we've got going on. So first let me talk a little bit about focus. I've noticed in the past little bit that even more starkly that there are many participants in the larger decentralized identity SSI ecosystem that are very focused on verifiable credentials. Now that shouldn't necessarily be surprising. Verifiable credentials are a really incredibly useful tool for portable trust, for reducing the cost of data integrations, all sorts of really useful things and the modified data flows to involve often people in the center of it instead of at the periphery. There's some really good behaviors that are brought on by VCs. But I've noticed most recently that there's a lot of over focus upon VCs as in the sense that the verifiable credentials themselves are viewed as the end goal of our efforts is that SSI is VCs and decentralized identity identity is VCs and that even to some degree that although this is a way more controversial that dids are useful for VCs but less useful for other things. And this community by specifically I mean the areas community has always in my mind had a little bit of a different view here and maybe I'm reading this wrong but it has been a little bit more about what happens because of verifiable credentials because we have these abilities than necessarily the delivery of the actual technology itself. And this is important because it influences choices of technology and where work effort is placed and that has an effect upon the projects that we actually have. Didcom's a large differentiator here in the sense that Didcom was never designed to be VC centric in that VCs are either a required thing or that Didcom was created for VCs alone but rather as a more general a metaprotocol that allows two parties with dids to communicate with each other. And one of the really useful things to do is use credentials of course in that communication but and credentials can add trust to that relationship but the actual existence of the communication channel allows for so much more and we've had some demonstration of that not as much as I think we have coming but we have protocols that don't necessarily have anything to do with verifiable credentials but happen over that same channel. And this is something that is interesting to me because it differentiates the work at least as I see it as a qualifier there I don't claim to see everything perfectly. A differentiator between the work that we have been long engaged in and then a variety of other protocols. And when I speak of other protocols I need to be careful here in the sense that when I talk about what I see is the advantages of Didcom I'm in no way proposing that we don't support other protocols that are more focused on verifiable credentials but I wanted to highlight the fact that the reason we care about Didcom and sort of the patterns that we've been developing is in fact because there are advantages that these other protocols didn't have they were not really born here or whatever else because we've had a focus on some things that are a little bit more powerful from that perspective. And here's an example and I'm really not trying to throw shade here just to make an observation and I think that they would agree with this the open ID for VCI and VP the open ID related credential protocols are effective at passing credential information and that's what they're designed to do they're very narrowly designed to do that which means that to some degree there's a lot of other details or other complications you might argue that can be left out because they're only focused on credentials as a specific task that they have in front of them. Didcom is often conflated with a specific protocol in Didcom often the credential issuance and presentation protocols inside of Didcom because that's the lens by which people are sort of looking through this meaning the VC lens causes them to sort of see Didcom only as a method to move verifiable credentials. In the larger world one of the things that was really obvious to me at the European Identity Conference this year was that the number one decentralized identity and SSI have become sort of the hot topic the very hot topic the year before it was mentioned but it was the hot topic this year and but as a result of that there's a massive focus on verifiable credentials very specifically and specifically protocols that are designed to do that and it has occurred to me that Didcom itself I don't think it's very well understood for what it actually offers in contrast to what the other protocols actually provide and this is a little wordy but I'm hoping to convey that at least in my view a long goal that we have been pursuing is for the engagement of a variety of activities related to decentralized identity among which verifiable credentials are an important piece but only one important piece in the presence of others that enable this larger ecosystem to work in a really powerful way and so that was not obvious to me and maybe it's obvious to everyone else and I apologize if so for taking up your time that there are sort of major priority differences or major fundamental differences between the work that we've been pursuing and how we see things and the work in the other related work in SSI that has been focused on inside of other communities and that was very interesting to me. The other also possibly unrelated thing here is that this community possibly just historically also grew up with more of a focus and an attention on trying to maintain privacy as much as possible and so there tends to be an affinity within areas for credential types that do that though certainly we have support for credential types that don't have all of those same features and are supported in our software but there's certainly an external perception that we're very focused on that and I wouldn't say it's necessarily incorrect that there is a lot of affinity within this group perhaps more than there is outside of this group for those technologies and I don't know if that's unrelated but only historical but it's another observation that I have is that that has tended to be an affinity of how this is done and so anyway those are some observations that I have and I hope those are useful and can help inform our discussion as we get into really talking about the difference in approaches that we have and partially what makes Aries unique. There are other software projects that are not inside of Aries that are in this space and I think that Aries has something important and I think it's important to recognize the valuable bits that we have that we want to preserve so that we as we discuss options moving forward it's a little bit easier to compare sort of that having some clarity around that with what we have with the options that we have in front of us. So I apologize for soap boxing just a minute but I hope that that provides some useful context there any thoughts before we dive into the agent versus wallet term discussion? I have a dumb question or maybe a naive question aside from OpenID are there any other communities that one thing that drew me to Aries originally was that because this group works on the whole stack from low level stuff all the way up to high level usability kind of things it seems like this community ships the most usable tools so other than OpenID which that seems pretty mature what are the other communities that are focusing on VCs? Well, from a protocol perspective there are two main other ones one is the CHAPI community CHAPI is the credential handler API inside of browsers that is designed for sort of browser to browser interaction or browser tab to browser tab if you will as it relates to wallets. So this is very much focused on the browser oriented wallet and wallet support. The other one is the collection of VC HTTP APIs that take an API centric approach on how the interactions both within users sort of domain and then between parties should occur. And so those tend to be the other two those are a little bit more focused on the W3C as sort of a nexus of where those conversations actually happen. Well, that's where the comparison is fuzzy is like those only do like a part of what I think Aries different Aries protocols do in the wider idealized scheme, right? So you're making a point here that this community tends to focus on a larger vertical piece of the stack which ironically has gotten us in trouble in some views because they feel like we're not making things piecemeal enough as we design stuff. Right, well, and defensive y'all that's why it seems like this group produces the most usable things is because focusing on little piecemeal parts those groups seem to advance much slower and run into more trouble because they don't focus on the whole stack. That's my opinion though naive and very naive opinion. I don't think it's super naive and I think that that started from the beginning. So there's a number of things that have spun out of Aries the most obvious one is did come there are some interests externally and made that happen. Oh, I didn't mention decentralized web nodes. So yeah, thanks Alex, the decentralized web nodes DWNs squares behind that there was some Microsoft involvement I don't know if there is any more yet or if there's any more but decentralized web nodes are another concept that is more storage oriented than necessarily communication oriented but there's some interesting bits there too. In none of these are exact replacements of each other or necessarily you have to choose one or the other but naturally most groups have tended to sort of prioritize the development of some protocols over others in the inability to have infinite resources to make stuff happen. I also have to highlight some really good work being done. So the Aries framework go community a long time ago was more focused on sort of Aries but without having anything to do with Indy. I think it got some Indy support added later by another party than the original developer and then AFJ has done a lot of work integrating both additional credential types and additional protocols into the code base. So the mission of Aries was never really narrowly defined as being only sort of the protocols that we have sort of ended up focusing on initially. It sort of just happened that that's where the nexus of work has been. So sorry, a little bit of an aside but stuff that I didn't say earlier that I should have. Charles, I think your point is good and I think that we as a community produced sort of the earliest full stack working thing that was cross-code compatible as a way to make that happen. And I think that's good. I think that, I think that's not his. And it's a measure of success that things have spun off to become isolated. Like DICOM can be its own thing. I think that's a measure of success of the community of what you all have done because it seems like having an implementation and spending all pieces that people can fit together seems easier than trying to make the pieces separate and then fit them together later. But that's an engineering opinion, cathedral versus bazaar, right? Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Charles. The floor is generally open. So Sam, it's John. So I agree and that's why I asked Alex here because we work on a lot of presentations and materials together. And when I talk to people now, I talk about what are we trying to accomplish? Sorry. And we're trying to create the opportunities for people to communicate amongst themselves with government, with businesses, business to business and have confidence that their digital relationships are confidential, that they can exchange authentic data, be it formal credentials, just unstructured chat, business documents or whatever, the whole richness of relationship, which is much more than just pulling a little thing out of your wallet or your filing cabinet to prove you're incorporated or whatever. And that you have some measure of privacy controls. Those are the three qualities that we emphasize. And from that, you can build your, the rich, complex, adaptive system that is your life or your business. It's much more than just passing a token and the mental model behind that is access control. So there's a lot more to life than access to a system. So that's kind of, I think, some of the messages we need to bring to the top. Thank you, John. Wallet to wallet verification, and that is a stark example of something that's different. One of the things that I would love to see more, I think lots of us share this view, but it's not just important for institutions to verify the information of people, but for people to be able to verify the information of other people, but also institutions. And I think that verifiable credentials are often looked at the other way where the holders are the people that have them, but other people are the verifiers. And I yearn for and envision an ecosystem where everyone is a verifier in some sense during their transactions. And that allows for the mutual trust to be built up that is necessary rather than sort of mimicking today's world where SSL certificates, TLS certificates, and client-side certificates both exist, but client-side certificates and practicality don't really exist. And so they exist, but they're not ever used. And I think that we can do better in that sense. And so being able to verify from the mobile side, not because you're a special institution, but simply because you're a person who wants to verify credentials, I think is really important. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's important potentially for people and communities, like I'm disabled and I have people come to help me. Sometimes it might be nice if somebody could be here to verify they're actually a care worker from the health authority or other kinds of help. Or just allow you to, obviously with some device help, but the fact that you could receive a presentation from them would be incredibly powerful. Other thoughts? Let's move into the wallet versus agent term discussion. We have long called them ARIES agents, not necessarily ARIES wallets, but are the more recent move into sort of a stronger mobile answer from the ARIES community has invoked the term wallet again. And a lot of time has passed. And so I think it's worth talking about this. The term wallet traditionally inside of the ARIES community, and I say traditionally because I do not believe this is universal use now, has referred to the actual sort of key storage, key management, signing, and encryption side of things. And that could be translated, for example, to Ascar as sort of the wallet that lives inside of the agent. And then agent has been described as the software that has a wallet, but that does other interesting things with it, right? Leverages the wallet on behalf of the user in order to provide interesting interactions. And that's the terms that we have used, but it's messy because there's all sorts of conversations happening all over the place to talk about that. And so the term wallet has also come into common use, not just outside of ARIES, but within ARIES, as it refers to an agent but that exists on a mobile device. And so there's a little bit of conflicting stuff here. And I'd love to sort of open up for people's thoughts where the terms that they have heard in use or the terms that they feel are most relevant or mean the right thing in the right context, who has opinions about terms. And I ask, what's the framing of the conversation? Has this come up as a concern? Is there a reason to choose one over the other? I don't know that it's been concerned necessarily, but there has been sort of an ambiguity there as it relates to our conversation. So the reason I'm trying to draw this out today is not necessarily because someone's proposing that we switch terms exactly, but that I think that having this conversation will help highlight what we, ARIES, are and what we produce. And I think some term clarity there will help us to message it more clearly in conversations we both have internally and to other parties. Thank you. Ken, your hands up. Yeah, I wanted to emphasize the difference between agent and wallet, particularly focused around some of the other protocols like question and answer or payment negotiation or any of the other protocols that can be communicated between agents that aren't necessarily wallet-y things. Wallets do play an important part of that in establishing the identity of the person, the key management and all that other fun and interesting stuff associated around VCs and DIDS, but some of the behaviors and things that we're trying to incorporate in the ARIES community involve more than just issuing a verifiable credential and verifying a verifiable credential. And so I think that the term agent is broader and encapsulates those much better than just a wallet concept. This is Mike. Ken and I are sharing an office. That's why my audio looks like Ken's audio or vice versa. Just to tack on to that thought, I've had conversations with customers where they're like, what's the difference? And your app only offers wallet functionality. So it only holds credentials or whatever. So why do you call it an agent? And so I think that also highlights the necessity of having some demos and some use cases that utilize those other protocols and functionality so that when we draw the distinction between a wallet and an agent, people will say, oh, a wallet is for these purposes and the agent can do more. Whereas right now a lot of the demos and use cases don't utilize anything beyond what looks like a wallet. And that's part of the reason I think for the confusion is that the agents aren't doing a lot of things that aren't very wallet-like at the moment. Got a thumbs up from Alex on that one. Steve, your hands up. Yeah, I enjoyed those thoughts. I'd like to second them. A lot of times, at least with the people I talked to, we look at a wallet as an app. So the Apple wallet, the Google wallet. And that's the main purpose of the app is being a wallet. The other side that leads more towards the agent side, which is I think where most of us are gonna end up, is that we create an app that has wallet functionality. And so the app does whatever it does, whatever you made the app for. And then it needs to exchange verifiable credentials and verify them and hold them and assert them and all that kind of good stuff. And so there's, when we talk about, this kind of came into my mind a little more when we talk about rules and verifications and such that wallets need to adhere to. And in my way of thinking, a wallet oftentimes will be part of an app. And so what we're talking about is constraints on app design. And that's a nuance I think all of us need to ponder is what is it exactly we're building? Are we all building wallets? Are we building apps that have wallet and agent-like functionality as part of their purpose? Just thought I'd throw that out there. Steve, when you're talking the, you said what's the purpose of the app, right? I'm paraphrasing. And I thought we don't call them TLS engagement applications, we call them web browsers. Because the purpose is to browse the web and they engage in TLS behaviors as a useful aspect of doing so. But it's not about the TLS, it's about the web. And I think what you were saying is that, if I understood you right, is that we ought to be thinking about what the app is actually doing rather than the method by which it's doing so. And that may help clarify. Did I understand you right, Steve? Yeah, that's exactly it. Just, well, exactly that. Yeah, that's good. Okay, thank you. I'm trying to be brief and not just go on. So you got it right, thank you. Awesome, Alex, your hands up. Yeah, a few thoughts. There's a bit of it depends. I think that when we're talking to people outside of our immediate sphere, if you're coming fresh to this, a wallet is a much stronger term. A wallet is a very obvious concept from the physical and everyone gets it. But agents, even not in the text space, doesn't mean much. You think secret agents, you know, 007 stuff. So I think it's important to think about the words as they might be received from outside this. I think that a wallet with extra capabilities is more understandable because, okay, it's a wallet. The whole thing is you can do more things because of the things it holds, or whatever the way of approach it might be, but just say that the wallet is a more approachable concept than agents if you're starting from, say, more senior decision makers or people outside this area. I think that lends itself to one other thought, which isn't directly on this, but it's, so I mean, podring for last, the last wall is all these capabilities, all this potential is realized through take up, contraction and use. And what's most approachable to people, I see often personally, and that people can really get, is around wallets, the idea of a wallet and identifying yourself and credentials. It's very tangible. There's a land grab that comes from that. I think that's the starting point is that this gets adoption through people wanting to be able to hold things. And then the extra capabilities are realized on top after that. But if you're not there first, you can have all this potential where it could be, but then you miss out to a good enough solution that gets the most traction worldwide and that's the ballgame. And then they can extend it which are where they wish because they've got the actual buy-in from various people. So for all those reasons in this discussion, I think external comms beyond what we know it can do, I think wallets is broadly a stronger term. Yeah, I think I've mentioned this before, like the word phone changed, what it meant changed somewhere around, well, in particular 2007 when the iPhone was released. I mean, the iPhone has a phone app. It's not quite recursive, but okay. So it's something that people identify with and then you show them more. So a couple of our team, user experience team went out to a small town and did some user testing in the wild with mobile verification. I don't think I heard back that people said, well, why is a wallet doing this? They just enjoyed the ability to communicate and exchange like what we would call do proofs, but imagine you go to rent an apartment and you could create a connection, exchange proofs of things right there and a chat function and that's a rich conversation that just happens peer to peer. That's happening with your wallet app, but who cares what it's called? Just made me able to do something that was important. Yeah, if I can jump on the back of that, what John said and what I said before, the use case, the real world value is what draws people in. So when you can do stuff, they don't really care about what's below it. So starting with what's really obvious they can get and it's doing something they need to do and then we can build on top and find more features. However it gets there and the terms we use is almost by the by, if we're answering real world problems as well. Well, and combined with the, with the, well, essentially the promise, but you can expect it that this wallet provides you with some promises, which is that your interactions are confidential, that the exchanges are authentic data in different ways. Even if they're chat, they're happening through a confidential channel where you may be already convinced yourself, you know who the other party is, formally or not. So that there's a set of promises that differentiate back to your original topic and that this, you know, this, these wallets are for you, not for large data aggregators and big tech. And the other part, which we always again speaking of myopic, you know, personal wallets are like, okay and important, but there's a vast market opportunity with business to business interactions where they need the same kinds of guarantees, confidentiality, authentic data. They're, you know, that's a huge market where everybody's kind of enamored with the fancy little app on the phone, but organizations need these capabilities. Standard disclaimer about my notes, you please jump in and correct or add or other things that I miss. I am intending to take notes as sort of clearly and concisely as I can, but I'm gonna do a poor job. So please, please jump in if I do a poor job or something. Thank you, John, for that conversation. There's a couple of things that I pulled out of there. Mike, can I pick on you a little bit to talk about your comment in the chat? He's either looking for the mute button or has decided no. That's okay, he's getting lots of thumbs up. He said, wallets broadly is better understood, but will eventually be limiting. Agent is going to get co-opted by AI applications. And I think that that was a wise comment there. I think the term agent has a little bit been skating to where the puck is going, not necessarily where the puck is, but we might be fighting an uphill battle there just because of the lack of understandability and having to explain it every time may not be worth it. And it might be worth having that conversation later as people are familiar enough with wallets that they understand perhaps the difference and then not really worry about that. Yeah. Sorry, I got distracted for a second there, Sam, but yeah, you basically summarized and hit the nail on the head in regards to my comments. So thank you. Helen, you pasted the link to the Hyperledger announcement for Aries. Is there anything you want to draw out from there in particular? Yeah, well, you know, I just popped it in there just for us to remember kind of where Aries came from and what the initial goal was. I mean, I appreciate Alex's thoughts on adoption of the tech because I think that's incredibly important. I also think it's incredibly important to represent what this project can do to the developers and the companies and the maintainers and contributors of this project. Like if they see Aries as just a wallet, will they bypass all the other stuff that's, you know, has been made possible by the development of this project? I mean, a lot of the things, you know, weren't just a twinkle in the eye when Aries has now, you know, when we announced it. And I think that, yeah, just taking a look at where we came from and what the, you know, the goal was of the project. You know, we talked about this on the last call. Do we need to update what the goals of this project are? Do we need to clarify or modify some of these descriptions that are in this blog and new channels?  And I would hate for it to get buried or lost or not supported or not, you know, kind of on that, that trajectory of growth and development if, you know, we were to paint, you know, try to paint more broad strokes than maybe as appropriate. Thanks, Helen.  Yeah, I wanted to draw out the thought that not all agents or wallets are representing people. Some of them do, but some of them represent the cloud agents, for instance, that might represent a government or a business or a small business or enterprise. Do they want to have their, you know, the government wallet or is it a government agent that represents them? So looking at it, not to ignore the individual aspect and the privacy preservation and so forth, but there are also businesses and governments and other organizations that might be represented as well. Thanks, Ken. Alex. Yeah, just in support of what Helen says, agreed. My suggestion is not in the context of what Aries is and how we describe it for specific about wallet versus agents and how we communicate up the chain and make that an approachable concept. So for Aries, yeah, I completely agree. There's much more to it. And that's, I think that's a fascinating part is picking those elements out and being able to communicate out in an approachable way what makes this work special in all its facets. So completely agree on that. One of the things that's showing up on my brain here is that even if we don't use different terms, we might change how we convey them to people. Like for example, if someone says, well, what's an agent? You can say, well, it's a smart wallet or it's a wallet with extras or things like that, which I think would be really interesting. Keep it coming guys, this is great. I mean, you can use Aries to build a quote unquote wallet but you need all the other capabilities to be able to make, to bring that alive. Like so issuing and verifying and holding as an organization, supporting different protocols and credential formats for different use cases. Like it's the web of interactions. Don't have enough words in English, it's the problem. I feel like we don't have enough words to mean snow, but in the right ways to talk about this concept. Warren. Yeah, I think the terms that we use are important but I think also the context in which we use them matters too. I like, we tend to think about, I think a wallet is something which is a way of managing our keys as well as a way of managing our, the storage of our credentials. And those are actually two separate functions, right? So there's key management and there's credential storage management. And then agents which represent the rich interactions, some of which involve that the key stores and the credential stores. But from a popular perspective or a broad perspective, I think that using the term wallet and overloading it is okay depending on the perspective. And going back to the, I thought the summary that you made, I'm sorry, I've forgotten who made the original comment but you summarize quite well about not treating a web browser as like a TLS negotiation thing. That's not how we think of it. It just happens to be an artifact of what a web browser does. And similarly, it has a notion, which again, users don't know about called a user agent. It is an agent, but that's not how people talk about it from a like a high level abstraction perspective. And so I think it's very dependent on the context. And I think that we need to be cognizant of that. And again, at a technical level, I think we can be a little bit more precise. There are words that we can use to describe, okay, we've got key management, we've got credential management, we've got protocols for interaction. And sometimes we group those things together and call them wallet, but it's not precise. And that's okay. Well, there's a company in there. Thank you, Warren. Steve, you're next. Yeah, no, this is an interesting discussion. I was contemplating Mike's comments about AIs and wallets. Back in the day, as a kid, I'd call in the radio station and I'd try to win a free vinyl record. So that'll tell you how old I am, meaning I'm a kid today. The cool kids are doing it today too, Steve. You're fine. That's right. So what the purpose of my call was not to give them my identity, it was not to make a call per se. My purpose was to get an album. So I can see that looking at combining AIs and wallets, my purpose may be today to tell my AI when the tickets are on sale, be first in line and get me one. And so the purpose, if you look at the purpose of whatever application that might become, it's not so much identity, it's not so much connection, it's the combination of all those things. And I think as we start to look at what's a wallet, what's an agent and those broader terms, I think we're gonna find additional connection points that make what we're building. We're gonna be able to let other developers and designers see what we're doing in a different light and be attracted to it more. Thank you, Steve. I mean, it's communicating to different audiences. So that kind of structure of my talks, I talk about why. So what are the symptoms we're experiencing as people, as organizations building systems? We're experiencing theft and phishing and spam and counterfeiting as individuals, we all relate to that. Building complex systems and interact with many different organizations is an N squared problem. So that's hard. So what do we wanna do? What do we wanna do? So we wanna have these confidential protocol based interactions and then how do we do that? That's what Steve was just talking about here, the building blocks, but the point being that it's, what can I do? Like I don't, you know, people think about what's the task I'm trying to accomplish and then they open the app or they go to the service. So we can expand what the wallet does as we have people using them to accomplish the task they need to do. Thank you. I've heard something that I didn't anticipate here today. I think I've heard that being precise about the term is it nearly as important as we think it is? And that if it helps people understand if we use different terms in different contexts, maybe in business contexts, we tend to lean into agent because it's what they say as a starter or is what they think about from an organization perspective but from a personal perspective, we tend to start from wallets because that's where people come from, then that's okay. And then what we get to then explain is what the overloading or the extras or the smartness actually comes from as part of our project. And I think that if we attempt to explain it in that way, it can make it more approachable but also highlight the differences between, for example, an application built on Aries that has the ability to use the question answer protocol and basic message another non-wallet type of protocols can help differentiate, for example, between something that we're building and something that is strictly a crypto wallet, for example, whose goal is cryptocurrency management. And so that's, anyway, the whole lack of precision might be good thing is actually something that I didn't expect to hear today but I find super insightful. We have like three minutes left. Any sort of closing thoughts or realizations that others wanna share? Alex. Just a quick one, Sam, I think completely agree and that's not to negate the importance at a technical level of that precision. Like within our community, in our discussions, we need that precision in order to execute on some of these beautiful ideas, but not bad. And as a question of adoption, when there's all this work happening worldwide, when there's about to become a de facto standard through whatever means, it's about understanding and it's about, I don't think it would aim necessarily this way or that we should, but a good enough solution that's in enough places often wins and history's got many examples of when the best technical solution didn't win out because it didn't have the traction for any number of good reasons. So I'm really curious always from what I can bring to it is it builds on top of that beautiful technical precision but then it makes it approachable, makes it understandable, makes it tied to real things people are trying to solve now and then it expands once that critical mass, the tipping point has been reached, the other parts can be realized as well but none of it can be realized with all the great attention in the world if something else wins out in the meantime because it answers the problems now and it's understandable now. I think it's an ongoing, I think it's a really good tension but it's one to explore further. I appreciate that. We have about one minute left. We haven't, I haven't heard anything today from Timo. Can I bother you for a quick thought about how you think of all this? Yeah, sure. I'm not as clear today so I haven't shared my opinion but I think it makes sense. I think especially the last thing you said on like that term doesn't really matter and that overloading is okay. I think that makes a lot of sense so that maybe this question isn't as important as we portray it to be. I think Alex and I think the gentleman at the beginning that pointed out that you can build things with Aries now. You can deliver stuff now. The other stuff is later. Right, and then that's okay. And then people aren't gonna be bothered by the fact that like suddenly we might be describing things with a different term or adding smart to it or something is not that much of an issue. So thank you. I apologize for springing that on you Timo but I appreciate it. And we didn't hear from others. I'm a little bit bummed throughout the time but I very much appreciate the conversation today and it's helped me understand a lot. These conversations are sometimes a little squishy because they're not very technical but I think they're overall very useful and so I appreciate everyone being here. I hope your week is a great one and please speak up in the channels or in other things or in topics in future meetings and we can get things discussed that you think are important. I very much appreciate everyone's involvement and I hope you have a great week. Thanks for your hosting, Sam. Thanks. Thanks, Sam. Thank you. Thanks everyone. Thanks folks. Thanks, bye.


وَأَقُولُوا فِي القُرْآنِ مَا جَاءَتْ بِهِ آيَاتُوهُ فَهُوَ الْكَارِيمُ الْمُنْزَالُهُ وَأَقُولُوا قَالَ اللَّهُ جَلَّ جَلَالُهُ وَالْمُصْطَافَ الْهَاديِ وَلَا أَتْ أَوَّالُهُ بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم الحمد لله رب العالمين وصل الله وسلم وبارك على عبده ورسوله نبينا محمد وعلى آله وأصحابه ومن تبع عنهم بإحسان إلى يوم الدين أما بعد في today's episode today's chapter that we're going to be going through is from the book العوروة الوسقى written by الشيخ صالح ابن عبد الله ابن حمد العصيمي حفظه الله تعالى and the chapter that we're going to be going through today from this book is the chapter of باب وفضل العلم والطريق طلابه the virtue of knowledge and the way and the path to seek knowledge the reason why I chose to go through this chapter today is because in recent times we have seen and this is something that was it's not a new phenomena it's not something that's very new but it gets worse and worse as time goes on and that is that people a lot of people they don't know how to seek knowledge they don't know where they should get knowledge from they don't know the methodology that they should take in order to gain this knowledge from the Quran and the Sunnah and the Shari'ah of the Islam and so because of that I thought that in شاء الله تعالى I will go through this chapter in order to teach the brothers and sisters to teach people steps and marks how to take knowledge we're not going to exactly be going through the way practically how to seek knowledge from A to B A B C D No we're going to be what we're going to be going through in شاء الله تعالى is a methodology that a person needs to have when it comes to seeking knowledge and before that in شاء الله تعالى we're going to be speaking about the virtues of knowledge and all of this all of this this information all of these things that we're going to be going through are from the Quran and the Sunnah and a thousand narrations from the Salaf of this Ummah nothing other than that and this is what the شيخ صالح done in his book العروة الوثقان he brought nothing but chapter headings and below that he brought evidences for to prove these chapters he brought evidences in order to prove these chapters and so in شاء الله تعالى this is what we're going to be going through today so he says بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم بابوا فضل العلمي وطريق طلبه the chapter of the virtue of knowledge and the way to seek knowledge and the first evidence that he brings is وقول الله تعالى و الله سبحانه وتعالى says in the Quran شهد الله أنه لا إله إلا هو والملايكة وول العلم قائما بالقصة لا إله إلا هو العزيز الحكيم الله سبحانه وتعالى توضس in the Quran that الله عز و جل he bears witness and الله سبحانه وتعالى no doubt is the highest of witnesses and he bears witness to what? he bears witness to the highest of things to be witnessed for and that is a توحيد شهد الله أنه لا إله إلا هو he bears witness that there is nothing worthy of worship except for الله سبحانه وتعالى أعظم المشهود به this is the greatest thing that is being bore witness for وهو أن الله سبحانه وتعالى that is Allah سبحانه وتعالى he is one alone that deserves to be worshipped not only does Allah سبحانه وتعالى bear witness to this but also والملايكة and the angels they also bear witness to this and then Allah سبحانه وتعالى brings a third group of people and this is the point to show the virtue of the people of knowledge how they are above all other people he says وأولول العلم قائما بالقصة and the people of knowledge they also bear witness to this قائما بالقصة they stand up with justice الله سبحانه وتعالى brings the people of knowledge as witnesses in front of the people and this is a sign that Allah سبحانه وتعالى considers the people of knowledge to be from the best of people because you don't bring someone as a witness in court unless you believe that this person is someone who is يعني just someone who is deserving to be a witness you don't bring a liar to be a witness in court you don't bring a wicked person an evil person to be a witness in court rather you bring someone who is virtuous someone who is witness is accepted and this is the people of knowledge that Allah سبحانه وتعالى brings and this is from the first ayat that shows the virtues of the people of knowledge وقوله تعالى the second evidence that Allah سبحانه وتعالى brings I mean that the author رحمه الله وتعالى brings is و الله سبحانه وتعالى says in the Qur'an و يرى الذين أوتوا العلم الذي أنزل إليك من ربكه والحق و يهدي إلى صراط العزيز الحميد that the people of knowledge they are the ones they see and they believe they are the ones who believe that what was revealed to you from your Lord or Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم it is the truth and it guides to the path of العزيز الحميد الله سبحانه وتعالى's path the point of evidence here in this ayat is that how Allah سبحانه وتعالى mentions that knowledge is what guided these people to the truth and what some a comment or a saying that is common amongst most cultures to be honest is knowledge is light and knowledge is a light that guides people to the truth it guides them and shows them what is right and what is wrong and so Allah سبحانه وتعالى praised the people of knowledge here because they were guided because of their knowledge to the truth إلى صراط العزيز الحميد to the path of Allah سبحانه وتعالى the Almighty the most praiseworthy and so from the virtues of knowledge that it shows you the way and this is my brother and sister this is very important today there are sects there are groups there are ideologies that go outside of Islam and a person he sits down and he's confused he doesn't know where to go what should I follow what should I believe and there is no way for a person to get out of that and there is no way for a person to be able to be guided to the straight path and the correct path except by knowledge Allah سبحانه وتعالى praises these people of knowledge because their knowledge guided them to the truth and that's why when they say العلم و نور knowledge is light knowledge is light because it shines a light in the darkness of ignorance and it takes a person upon the path upon بصير upon insight and knowledge right and Allah سبحانه وتعالى the third evidence is وقوله تعالى فسألوا أهل الذكري إن كنتم لا تعلمون ask the people of knowledge if you do not know and it shows two things number one the virtue of the people of knowledge and number two the way to seek knowledge as for the virtue of people of knowledge then they are the ones who Allah سبحانه وتعالى commands the rest of the people everyone else has been commanded to go to the people of knowledge إن كنتم لا تعلمون if you do not know and the second thing that it shows in this ayah is that Allah سبحانه وتعالى says فسألوا أهل الذكري ask and that's why I'm from here we understand that from the ways of seeking knowledge is by asking questions if a person has a question that he needs to ask he shouldn't keep it in his head keep it in his head and have that doubt stayed and you know lingering in his head no this doubt needs to be asked about and so from the ways of see gaining this knowledge and getting these doubts removed is by asking the people of knowledge and that's why ابن عباس رضي الله عنهما has narrated from him that he said when he was asked about how did you gain this knowledge ابن عباس was from the companions he was a scholar he was from the scholars of the companions he was asked how did you gain this knowledge he said I gained this knowledge by having a tongue that would constantly ask he would constantly ask وبيقلب عقول and I had a heart that would accept and would understand the answers to these questions and so from the ways of seeking knowledge is to make sure that you ask don't be shy to ask don't be shy to ask something that you don't know something that you don't understand ask the people of knowledge don't let this doubt stay in your head until it gets into your heart and takes you maybe into a path of misguidance والله المستعين the third evidence is وعم معاوية ابن عباس رضي الله تعالي عنهما معاوية ابن عباس رضي الله he narrates from the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم that he said قال رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم من يريد الله بيخيرا يفقه في الدين متفق عليه that whoever Allah سبحانه وتعالى wants good for he gives him الفقه in the religion he gives him فقه in the religion what is فق here الفق generally in the Arabic language it means for someone to understand in the Quran we have آيات that show that the word فق is used as understanding you know the people of of شعيب they said to شعيب the Prophet شعيب they said to him قالوا يا شعيب ما نفقه كثيرا من ما تقوله or شعيب we don't understand the law of what you're saying it's a deep understanding we don't understand we don't comprehend what you're saying and in the ayah in the Dua'a of Musa when he asked Allah سبحانه وتعالى he said قال رب الشرح لي صدري ويسر لي أمري وحل العقدة من الإساني يفقه قولي so that they may have understanding of my of my speech and so whoever Allah عز و جل He wants good for then He gives him fiqh in this religion He gives him understanding of this religion and as a sign Allah wants good for you that He gives you this understanding but not only that not only that the Salaf as Ibn Qaym رحمه الله تعالى mentions by إجمع by consensus of the Salaf they wouldn't consider someone to be a fiqh with just information a person will be considered to be a fiqh a person of fiqh a person of understanding if he when he understands the religion and number two he acts by it and so whoever Allah عز و جل wants good for He gives him this knowledge from the virtues of the people of knowledge He gives him this knowledge but not only gives him this knowledge that's not the only sign He gives him the knowledge and he acts by it when a person you see him that he has sought knowledge and you see that he's acting by this knowledge inwardly in his heart and outwardly then this is the person that Allah سبحانه و تعالى wants good for and this hadith was narrated by Al-Bukhari and Muslim the scholars they mentioned that the opposite is also true the opposite is also true and that is that whoever Allah سبحانه و تعالى wants no good for He doesn't give him understanding the religion the fact that you are here learning the deen of Allah سبحانه و تعالى you're listening to something that insha'Allah و تعالى is going to be beneficial for you is a sign that hopefully Allah wants good for you and those people who are in misguidance or who are in يعني in wasting their time then this و العياده بالله may Allah سبحانه و تعالى protect us from it is a sign that Allah سبحانه و تعالى there's no one good for this person may Allah عز و جل give us understanding the religion then وعنا بالدرداء رضي الله عنه أبو الدرداء He narrates from the prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم and this hadith the scholars they say it is أجمعو حديث في فضل العلم or في فضل أهل العلم this is the most comprehensive hadith that speaks about the virtues of the people of knowledge أبو الدرداء the great companion رضي الله عنه from the scholars of the companions he narrated that he said سمعتو رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم ما يقول I heard the messenger of Allah عليه الصلاة و السلام saying من سلك طريقا يطلبوا فيه علما سلك الله به طريقا من طرق الجنة whoever takes a path seeking knowledge then Allah سبحانه و تعالى will take him into a path from the path of Jannah he the prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم in this narration he said من سلك طريقا يطلبوا فيه علما he seeks knowledge in another narration he says من سلك طريقا يلتميسوا فيه علما and there's a difference between يطلبوا و يلتميس and there's a subtle difference between them and they both they both apply to this person whoever takes a path يطلبوا seeking knowledge و يلتميسوا and also seeking knowledge بإلتماس is less than atatalab meaning if a person takes a path to seek knowledge with minimum the smallest of effort just open a YouTube video and you looked he opened a lesson and looked he opened a book and he read one page of the book or higher than that he went out to the masjid and he sought knowledge from the masjid or higher than that he went out and he flew out or he went to a different country in order to seek knowledge all of these people they are considered to be a person who has sought knowledge and he comes under this حديث اللتماس the word التماس it comes from a man who's blind imagine a man who's blind how does he seek something they open their eyes or they don't open sorry they open their hands because they can't see with their eyes and they look for something this is called اللتماس ادنططلب the smallest of ways the smallest path that you take to seek knowledge you come under this حديث even if it just be one حديث one آية listen to one lecture read the tafsir of one آية that you didn't understand you come under this حديث من سلك طريقاً يلتمص فيه علم سلك الله بي طريقاً من طلق الجنة الله سبحانه وتعالى will take him from upon a path from the paths of جنة and then that's the first virtue of the people of knowledge in this حديث the second virtue is وإن الملايكة لا تضعوا وجنحتها لطالب العلم رضاً لما يصنع that the angels they lower their wings for the student of knowledge imagine the angels of الله سبحانه وتعالى when a student of knowledge is there they lower their wings they lower themselves out of humility out of honoring that person of knowledge the angels they lower their wings for the student of knowledge رضاً لما يصنع or رضاً لطالب العلم out of pleasure for what they do out of pleasure for them seeking the knowledge and then he says وإن العالم ليستغفروا له من في السماوات ومن في الأرض والحيثانوا في جوف الماء that the angels in the person of knowledge everything in the heavens and the earth they ask الله سبحانه وتعالى to forgive the person of knowledge and this is the third virtue of the people of knowledge in this حديث and that is that everything asks for them to be forgiven والحيثانوا في جوف الماء even the fish in the sea they ask الله سبحانه وتعالى to forgive the alim the person of knowledge why though why does the alim have such a virtue where everything is asking asking الله سبحانه وتعالى to forgive them is because of the good that comes from this scholar the good in this dunya is because of the knowledge that is acted by in this dunya whenever someone slots as an animal فأحسن الضبحة he does it in a good way he slots as the animal in a merciful way he done it because the Sharia commanded him to do that and because the alim told him to do that the person of knowledge told him to do that and so this animal out of because of the good that's coming to him he asks the animal asks الله سبحانه وتعالى to forgive the alim the fish in the sea the animals in the sea or the animals that are on land the angels are in the heaven they ask الله سبحانه وتعالى to forgive the alim because without this knowledge that he is given out to the people the people will be corrupted and corruption only comes because of the sins of the people and that only comes because of the ignorance الله سبحانه وتعالى says in the Qur'an إِنَّ مَا تَوْبَتُوا لِلَّذِينَ يَا إِنَّ مَا تَوْبَتُوا عَلَى اللَّهِ لِلَّذِينَ يَا عَمَلُونَ السُّؤَ بِجَهَالَةَ that the repentance to الله سبحانه وتعالى is for the one who does evil he does a sin but out of ignorance out of ignorance ابن مسعود رضي الله عنه he said that every single person who sins he only sinned out of ignorance because if you sinned he only sinned because you didn't know الله سبحانه وتعالى the way you should have known him if you really knew Allah you would never ever disobey Allah if you really knew الله سبحانه وتعالى and you knew the hellfire and you knew the reality of the hellfire in Jannah you would never ever disobey الله سبحانه وتعالى even if that ignorance be a little tiny bit of ignorance might be some small ignorance some people may be very ignorant of Allah so they constantly sin and some people they may be slightly ignorant of Allah سبحانه وتعالى so they're sinning sometimes but no doubt it all comes from ignorance and the A'alim the person of knowledge he is the one who is taking away the ignorance from these people and so when he takes away when the ignorance of these people is less then their sins become less and when their sins becomes less then the corruption on the earth becomes less الله سبحانه وتعالى says in the Qur'an ظهر الفساد في البرج والبحري بما كسبت ايدي الناس ليذيقهم بعضال الذي يعملوا اعلىهم يرجعون الله سبحانه وتعالى he says that الفساد corruption has become apparent in the land and in the sea بما كسبت ايدي الناس because of what the actions of the people have earned because of the actions of the people have earned ظهر الفساد في البرج والبحر in the land and in the sea because of the actions of the people ويذيقهم بعضال الذي يعملوا so that they may taste some of their own actions لعلىهم يرجعون in the hope that they may return to Allah سبحانه وتعالى and so this A'alim his benefit is not only for himself the A'alim's benefit the scholars benefit the person of knowledge his benefit is for all other people and that's why everything asks الله سبحانه وتعالى to forgive the A'alim even the fish in the sea and then the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم he carries on and he says وإن فضل العالم على العابدي كفضل القمر ليلة البدري على سائر الكواكب that the virtue of the person of knowledge over the mere worshipper is like the virtue of the moon the full moon ليلة البدر when it's full على سائر الكواكب over all other stars and the reason for that is because the A'alim the person of knowledge his benefit is not only for himself he's teaching the people and he's giving فتوه he's giving answer to the people he's teaching the religion so his benefit is متعدي it goes to other people not just himself as for the mere worshipper then yes he has benefit he has a huge benefit he's worshipping الله سبحانه وتعالى but his benefit is only for himself he's at home worshipping he's in his مصلى is praying his benefit is for himself but the scholar his benefit is for everyone and so just like that the moon the moon his benefit are way bigger than the benefit the A'alim with them from the stars and then he says وإن العلماء ورثة الامبياء that the scholars they are the inheritors of the prophets وإن الامبياء لم يوديثوا دينار ولا ديرهما and the prophets they didn't leave behind gold and silver the only thing that is inheritance that we're talking about is inheritance that we know of money when someone dies they leave behind money no the scholars the prophets الله عليه وسلم said نحن ومعشر الامبياء لا نورث ما تركناه صداقة وكما قال صلى الله عليه وسلم he said we prophets we do not leave behind inheritance wherever we leave behind it is صداقة it is charity for the sake الله سبحانه وتعالى but what they leave behind as inheritance is the knowledge أسعابه رضي الله عنه one time came to the marketplace and he said to the people in the marketplace what are you doing here when the inheritance of the prophets صلى الله عليه وسلم is being distributed in the masjid and so the people they ran to the masjid hoping to gain some of this money they thought it was being distributed amongst the people inside the masjid from the prophets صلى الله عليه وسلم's money and so when they came back they said to Abu Hurair we did not see any inheritance being distributed and so Abu Hurair رضي الله عنه he said what did you see they said we saw people learning about the Deen of Allah learning knowledge and so this Abu Hurair said this is the inheritance of the prophet whoever takes this inheritance then as the prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم said لا نور we do not leave behind gold or silver إنما ورث they only left behind knowledge فمن أخذه أخذ بحضر واتر whoever takes this whoever takes this knowledge then he has taken a huge portion of the prophet or a huge portion of the inheritance of the prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم this hadith was narrated by أبو داوود نترمذي ونبلماجه and it is a snad is Hassan the next hadith that the author brings in this chapter of the virtue of knowledge and the way to seek knowledge is a hadith that speaks about how to seek knowledge now and so the first thing that he brings when it comes to how to seek knowledge is وعن ابن عباس رضي الله عنهما ابن عباس رضي الله عنهما and rates from the prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم that he said تسمعون ويسمعوا منكم ويسمعوا من من سميع منكم روح أبو داوود this hadith was narrated by أبو داوود that the prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم that he said you are going to hear you are going to hear ويسمعوا منكم and people are going to hear from you talking to the companions يعني you are going to hear from me صلى الله عليه وسلم and when you hear that people are going to hear from me you are going to pass it on ويسمعوا من من سميع منكم and those who heard from you are going to be heard from as well from this hadith we gain that from the and this is something that is specific to the knowledge of Islam or one of the things that are specific to the knowledge of Islam and that is that our knowledge is passed on from person to person our knowledge of Islam isn't passed on only through books books are not the primary source of knowledge in Islam that's why the prophet that's why the Salaf they would say الإسناد ومن الدين that the chain of narration is from the religion ولول الإسناد لقال من شاء ما شاء that if there was no chain of narration then whoever wants to speak can speak about however he wants to speak so from the خصائص one of the specifications is one of the things that are special about and specific about the religion of Islam of the شريعة القرآن وصنة is that it's passed on orally from person to person not only I'm not saying that it's only oral no but it's also the primary source of knowledge is التلقى والسماع is for a person to go to a sheikh to go to a teacher and take directly from his mouth take directly the knowledge that he's given him take it directly and write it down and take it from him it's not primarily taken from books the scholars they would say some of the people they would say from the Salaf ولا تأخذ القرآن عن مصحفي ولا تأخذ علم عن صحفي don't take the Qur'an from a mushafi a mushafi is a person who would take knowledge from reading directly from the mushafi and don't take knowledge from someone who took knowledge just from his books because والله that person his knowledge is not going to be correct knowledge the Salaf they used to say من كان شيخه وكتابه whoever's sheikh whoever's teacher is his book كان خطأه أكثر من أكثر من صوابه his mistakes will be more than his the things that he gets correct and this is true no doubt our knowledge of Islam is passed on from person to person why is that from the reasons that this hadith or from the reasons of this is that the knowledge of Islam isn't just information the knowledge of Islam is a سلوك is a way a person carries himself أخلاق as mannerisms and the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم would say أسمت صالح that the way you carry yourself was too ada and being you know not being hasty is part of Prophethood is a portion of the portions of Prophethood these kind of things of mannerisms this is part of what is passed on to people and it's not just mere information and that's why you find from the athar of the Salaf اللي محمد would sit down and he would teach and he would teach and 5,000 people would be sitting in his gathering only 500 would be writing the rest they would go and they would seek they would look at his manners what are they looking at they're looking at how he carries himself they're looking at how he speaks they're looking at when he speaks they're looking at what kind of questions does he answer what kind of questions does he ignore what kind of information does he give at a certain time when it's a situation of political turmoil for example and as it was at the time with محمد they used to say المحمد he would never he would never he wouldn't narrate at his time he wouldn't narrate a hadith that were pertaining to rebelling against the rule or يوهيم الخروج they would some people they would understand from it that they can rebel against the ruler so just to protect them from understanding wrong from a hadith that he would narrate he wouldn't narrate that hadith right or you would find that when it would be a time when there would be a certain issue came up he would narrate a hadith pertaining to that certain issue maybe he would do it directly and maybe they would do it indirectly when the Prophet ﷺ he was asked by a young man can I kiss my wife الرمضان he said no and when an old man asked him the same question he said yes there's not something that you learn necessarily in books there's something that you see from your sheikh from your teacher from the Prophet ﷺ this is the kind of things that he's been passed on when it comes to the knowledge of Islam it's not just mere information hadith and quran and ayah memorizing memorizing no it's understanding and understanding how to apply it and this is something that you can't get from books this is something that you cannot get from books so this hadith is important is one of the the basis of of how to gain Islamic knowledge and that is باية تلقي والسماع ألمان ألمان مالك رحمه الله ألمان مالك he said that when I was younger my mother he she my mother she dressed me my mother dressed me up and put a turban on my head and said to me إذهب إلى الربيعة go to the rabia ربيعة was ربيعة ابن عبد الرحمن they were known as ربيعة الرأي he said go to the rabia she said go to the rabia فتعلم من أدبه قبل أن تتعلم من علمه take from his mannerisms before you take from his knowledge this is something that you don't get from books mannerism how he speaks when he speaks how he sits down how he walks how he talks how he even drinks this is something that was passed on from the prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم generation to generation that's why they used to say المام أحمد was very was very similar to his teacher وكير من جرح of رؤاسي and وكير was very similar to سفيان ثوري and he was very similar to his teacher العلقامة and he was very similar to ابن مسعود and they would say that there was no one as similar to the prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم like ابن مسعود that's why Imam أحمد he has that chain of narration of how even he carries himself like the prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم would carry himself to a certain degree at least because he took knowledge from this chain of narration from this chain of narration and so from this we understand now this is one of the most important things this is why we get today this is why we get today groups of people coming out speaking about knowledge after having gained knowledge from nothing other than books and maybe they didn't even gain knowledge from books they thought that they could speak about the knowledge of the deen of Allah سبحانه و تعالى but when you see them the way they carry themselves they use the most vulgar of speech they use the most rude ways of speaking they use the most ignorant arguments in order to speak about the deen of Allah سبحانه و تعالى this is nothing other than someone who hasn't taken knowledge from its correct people and some most of the times they haven't even taken knowledge at all one of the issues that and this is a very important issue that's why I'm speaking about it for a bit long is a question that I had once in المسجد النبوي in the Masjid of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم a question was asked to الشيخ صالح الفوزان حفظ الله و تعالى and they said الشيخ و تعالى we are a group of students from Russia I think it was Russia one of those countries and he says we don't have any any scholars around us is it enough for us to listen to the recordings of the people of knowledge and then teach our people what would some of us will think I think yeah of course just you have no other choice you have no people of knowledge around you listen to the recordings and then teach your people الشيخ صالح الفوزان حفظ الله و تعالى حفظ الله و تعالى he said no it's not enough you have to leave go to the people of knowledge and seek knowledge from them directly and then come back and teach your people and this Subhan Allah it had an effect on me it made you it makes you understand how important it is how important it is for a person to take knowledge from its people directly right and from the poems or from the lines of poetry that was narrated to me from one of my teachers الشيخ صالح و صيمي from his teacher محمد عليمين ايد الشيخيطي from his teacher عمر من محمبوبه الشيخيطي he said ولا يجوز أخذها من الكتب كما به قد صرحه بل قد يجب عليك أن تأخذها من ما يريك كيفية نطقي بها فاهولي فيك and let's talk about the knowledge of Tajweed for example for example knowledge of Tajweed is an example of this ولا يجوز أخذها من الكتب you're not allowed to take it from books only ولا يجوز أخذها من الكتب كما به قد صرحه بل قد يجيب it's obligatory for you to take it from the one who can show you how to speak كيفية نطقي بها فاهولي فيك from his mouth to your mouth you have to he has to show you how to learn the Tajweed and the rulings of the the حكام of Tajweed and so this is from the virtues the ways of the people of knowledge is that you take from directly from these people then he says وعن ابن عمر رضي الله عنهما عبد الله ابن عمر رضي الله تعالى عنهما he narrates he said قال سمعت رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم يقول I had the messenger of Allah صلى الله عليه وسلم say إن الله لا يقبضوا العلم انتزعن ينتزعوه من العباد الله سبحانه وتعالى he doesn't take out knowledge from the hearts from the people he doesn't take it out from the people he doesn't take knowledge by taking it out from the people so one day he's in a island next day he has no knowledge that's not the way Allah generally does things ولكن but the way he takes away knowledge from the earth is يقبض العلم he takes away knowledge by taking away the scholars they die they pass away حتى إذا لم يبقي علم until he does not leave any remaining scholar اتخذ الناس رؤوسا جهالا what's going to happen at that time the people they're going to start taking as their heads as the people of authority the people of knowledge that they go back to they'll take heads who are ignorant ignorant people they don't have any knowledge they might act like they have knowledge for example they might be seen as people in knowledge in reality and not only that they have no ورع they have no fear of Allah they don't have knowledge but they think they have knowledge فسؤلوا so they're going to be asked فسؤلوا فأفتوا and so they're going to give fatwa they're going to give answer to these people they're going to ask them a question and they're going to give answer to the question فسؤلوا فأفتوا بغير علم and so they're going to give fatwa without any knowledge I think maybe this is a halal maybe this is a haram it seems to be halal seems to be haram فضلوا and so they'll be misguided themselves وعضلوا and so they'll be misguided others وعضلوا from this hadith we understand the importance of rushing to the people of knowledge before they're taken away my brothers and sisters if you heard there was millions of pounds in a certain place you would rush to go get that money but when you hear there's a scholar he's old in age and he has knowledge why would you not rush to that to that scholar to gain what he has which is worth more than that money that you're rushing to and if he dies then the situation that the prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم told us about was going to might occur so why would we not rush to the people of knowledge so from here we understand that from the ways of seeking knowledge is to rush to the people of knowledge run before they die before they pass away because wallahi they're passing away fast very very fast passing away they're passing away in a way that we haven't even seen before in a long time that people of knowledge in the past year how many people of knowledge they died through this this time of the coronavirus for example that we're going through may Allah سبحانه وتعالى I'll lift it from the Ummah of Islam and from the people people are dying they're passing away we need to run to the people of knowledge rush to them before they're taken away by Allah سبحانه وتعالى و له معا عايشة رضي الله عنها عايشة رضي الله عنها she narrates from بقارية مسلم وصوم أنها قادت she said قادة رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم هذه الآية the prophet he recited an ayah and this ayah is هو الذي أنزل عليك الكتابة منه آيات محكمات هنا أم والكتاب وأخر متشابهات فأما الذين في قلوبهم زيغوا في التبعون ما تشابه منه بتغاق الفتنة وبتغاق تأويله وما يعلم تأويله إلا الله والراسخون في العلم يقولون آمننا به كل من عند ربنا وما يذكر إلا أولو الألباب he recited this ayah and this ayah has a meaning he says هو الذي أنزل عليك الكتاب الله عز و جل is the one who revealed to you the book منه آيات محكمات power of this ayah this Quran this book the ayah which are محكمات clear cut ayah ayah that you cannot interpret in two ways there's one interpretation clear cut for example قل هو الله واحد say Allah is one no one can come and say this ayah means Allah is multiple come and come and say that it's a clear cut ayah قل هو الله واحد هن أم الكتاب وأخره متشابهات and also from these ayah from the Quran ayah which are considered to be متشابهات متشابهات يعني a person can interpret it in the right way and he can interpret it in the wrong way if he has disease disease in his heart okay for example الله سبحانه وتعالى says إنا لحن نزل نذكر وإنا له لحافظون we are the ones who revealed this Quran and we are the ones who are going to preserve it this ayah is a clear cut ayah is an ayah sorry that has a clear meaning but someone with a disease in his heart can come and say إنا وي why does Allah say وي in the Quran وي it doesn't mean a we of plural multiple people rather it means we as a majesty in the Arabic language someone who wants to praise himself or wants to show his majesty he would say we for himself or a king he would say we he wouldn't say I he would say we الله says إنا نحن نزل نذكر وي are the ones who revealed the Quran person and disease in his heart what is he going to say he is going to ignore كله الله وحد ignore it and he is going to go and he is going to say no this means that there might be multiple gods والعيادة بالله impossible impossible to understand احنا طيب so some people do that maybe that example is extreme but they are examples I am going to give يقولوبهم زيغ those people who have deviance in their heart يفيت تبيعون اما تشابه منه they follow the ayat which they can interpret to suit their desires ابتغاء الفتنة وابتغاء تأويلة they seek in fitna seeking trials and tribulations وابتغاء تأويلة and sometimes they try to seek the knowledge they will never get that knowledge that they try to seek وما يعلم تأويله إلا الله an example of this that will be more common is the issue of music for example the issue of music we have the Qur'an and the sunnah a person is going to come and he is going to say but there is one hadith over there that if we interpret in a certain way we can say it is Halal طيب you are going to ignore all of these ayat and you are going to interpret a hadith to suit your desire when there is a correct interpretation which doesn't go against these ayat and hadith and all you are going to take that wrong interpretation and you are going to take and run with it for your desires there are a group of people who do this the Prophet ﷺ he read this ayat and he said to A'isha his wife رضي الله تعالى عنها قال to قال رسول الله ﷺ the Prophet ﷺ he said فإذا رأيت الذين يتبعون ما تشابه منه فأولائك الذين سم الله فحذروهم when you see these people who follow these ayat they follow these ayat that they can interpret in their own ways then these are the people who Allah spoke about so be fear them يعني stay away from them don't take knowledge from people from this we gain that we do not take knowledge from people who follow the متشابهات the ayat which they interpret according to their desires or they interpret in a way that suits their opinions and they don't completely submit to the Qur'an and the Sunnah rather they submit to their desires and the issue of music is one of the issues and there's many issues like that we have a hadith we have many many many narrations from the Prophet ﷺ prohibiting certain issues and someone comes and he says but in history it happened for example but one narration there is one narration that we could use to say that it's allowed we have a hundred hadith we have ayat in the Qur'an saying it's not allowed and you're using one just to say it's allowed and there's many today والعياد بالله and may Allah ﷻ protect us from such people and from their thoughts and ideologies that they use this in the names and attributes of Allah in the عقيد of أهل السنة they go against the way of أهل السنة one one narration that they can use to suit their own belief may Allah ﷻ protect us then the author brings the next hadith or the next أثر which is from عليبنا بيطالبن رضي الله عنه عليبنا بيطالبن رضي الله عنه he says من من تأخذون هذا العلم فإنما هو الدين it's narrated from him that he said look and be careful who you take this knowledge from because this knowledge is your religion so from the ways of seeking knowledge from people that we know that you know that this person is upon upon سنة he's upon knowledge he has knowledge the way it should be sought he doesn't go against the way of the Qur'an and the Sunnah and this person is the kind of person that knowledge should be taken from not just anyone if you find you go on Twitter for example today people go on Twitter people go on Instagram people go on all different types of social media and you see videos after videos حلال someone saying this and this and that and you find that people actually taking knowledge from these people where did he study who did he study from where did he take knowledge from who even said he's a person of knowledge today we can come out we can get a camera we can get a make a YouTube video you have no qualification to speak about the Deen of Allah and you can make you can make a video and speak about it and the sad thing is that people are going to listen to this person and that's the reality to teach you that you can't take knowledge from such people even if it seems like he knows Arabic even if to you you don't know Arabic yourself but it seems like he knows Arabic he probably doesn't know Arabic himself he made it around the mutual video he doesn't know Arabic himself he doesn't know the Deen of Allah he never studied himself but just because he made a video and he was brave enough not even brave enough he had the audacity to speak about Deen of Allah you probably that person might be the same level of you in religion same level just like everyone else and he doesn't know about Deen of Allah he never studied maybe the same as every single other person the only difference is what he had the audacity to speak about Deen of Allah he had the courage the evil courage to speak about Deen of Allah and you الحمد لله you didn't speak about Deen of Allah you stayed away from that sometimes Allah has the only difference sometimes the only difference that he has a beard and you don't have a beard so the point is look at who you taking this knowledge from wherever you see someone ask where did he study who did he study from who told him to come out and teach who told him who said that this person is allowed to be taken knowledge from and this is something that what Allah is needed more than ever in our times more than ever this ether was narrated by ابن عدي في الكامل والخطيب البغداد في الكفاية and it's not authentically narrated from Ali Bin Abi Talib but it was authentically narrated from other others and it's something that the Salaf they unanimously agreed upon but they don't take knowledge from every every single person anyone and everyone the next generation is from the companion ابن مسعود رضي الله عنه and he said لا يزالوا الناس الصالحين متماسكين أما أتاهم العلم من أصحاب محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم he said the people they will never see to be righteous upon righteous upon good as long as their knowledge comes from the companions of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم they were the ones who witnessed the revelation of the Quran and they witnessed the sayings of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم they narrated it from him and they were the ones who understood the religion the best الله سبحانه وتعالى says about them in the Quran فإن آمنوا بمثلي ما آمنتم بي فقد هتدوا if you believe in exactly what they believe then you are going to be guided and the path of الله سبحانه وتعالى and so the companions are the yard stick to what is right and what is wrong if the companions they understood something in a certain way then we follow them ما أتاهموا من علموا من أصحابي محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم it is not for a person to come and take the Quran and understand it in the way that he wants to understand I think this ayah might mean this and that or this hadith might mean this and that no, we take it from the way of the companions and so from the ways of seeking knowledge is to stick to the athar of the companions of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم and this is something that was known amongst the early generations like Imam Ahmed he was someone who was معظم for the athar of the athar he would really venerate the athar the narrations that were narrated from the companions of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم and the athar of this ummah from the early generations and then he says وَمِنْ أَكَابِرِهِمْ and from the elders at the time of the Ibn Masroor رضي الله عنه the khawaraj just came out they were young for the third year صفة هول أحلام they were crazy in their dreams right and Ibn Masroor رضي الله عنه is is warning us from taking knowledge from these people these people they left the companions of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم interpreted the Qur'an in their own way and the young new people we don't know we haven't studied any knowledge and so if someone goes and takes knowledge from them not that they're going to be destroyed so he says it's knowledge and the people who are upon the way of the Qur'an and the sunnah then the way of the companions of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم then you're going to be upon righteousness when he says من أكَابِرِهِمْ the people who are elder meaning elder in knowledge and elder in age and this is the perfect person as for someone who is elder in age and has no knowledge then we don't take from him and as for someone who is elder in knowledge and is young in age then we take from him according to what he can give so it doesn't mean that every single person who is young in age you don't take knowledge from him no from the companions who were those who were young in age and they were people of knowledge like ابن عباس رضي الله عنه he was a person of knowledge and he would attend the council of عمر بالخطاب رضي الله عنه at a young age age of a very young age before his 20s before the age of 20 around the age of 20 he would be attending the council of عمر بالخطاب رضي الله تعالى عنه and so he was young and people would take knowledge from him but when people who are young in age and they have knowledge then the knowledge then what is taken from them is not everything even though he's young in age you're not going to he's not going to be able to have that wisdom that an elder person of knowledge has he's not going to be able to have that insight that the elder person of knowledge has he's not going to be able to look generally إلى عواق بالأمور what is what the end of these matters are going to be what the end of things are going to be what's going to result in that answer the elder person he's seen it already he's seen it in his life he had knowledge and he saw the answer that were given he's seen these answers that were given before and he's going to base his answers based on his previous experience he knows how people are now he knows the tricks that people play as a young person of knowledge yes he might have memorized a lot and he might have good and you can take from him you can take knowledge from him but he's always going to be missing that level of wisdom that level of experience that the person of all elder is so therefore we say that the perfect person to take knowledge from is someone who's elder in age and elder in knowledge as for someone who's big in knowledge as well and younger in age then we take from him yes but they're limits to what we take from him and then he says that إذا أتاهم من أصغرهم هلقوا but when knowledge comes from those who are younger only younger who are destroyed and the reason why meaning those people يسفهون as بن مسعود رضي الله عنه he said himself when the people of knowledge when the people they take knowledge from the youngest the younger people what is intended by that is يسفهون الأكابل they are the innovators or people who are similar to the innovators who they build to the elders and they're the ones who you only take knowledge from the younger people and they say don't take from the elders this is what the people this is what بن مسعود رضي الله عنه is speaking about those younger people who consider the elder people of knowledge to be ignorant they don't know the reality of our times they don't know the واق they don't know the reality that's what they say when that happens هلقوا they're going to be destroyed and some of the scholars they also interpreted as the people of innovation from the خوارج who are new new to to the religion of Islam new to knowledge and they thought they knew everything so they left the companions and they made their own village in حرورة and they were younger and so if you follow them they know that you're going to be you're going to be destroyed the point is that from the ways of seeking knowledge is that you take it from the companions of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم and you prefer those who are elder in age and elder in knowledge and as for those people who are younger in age then you take knowledge from them as long as they have been approved of and their knowledge isn't what you take from them isn't what should be referred back to the only the elders in age and in knowledge such as الأمور المتعلقة بالدماء things that are connected to the blood of people things that are connected to huge issues political issues taken from a young kid who has no experience in politics he has no experience in life that's not that's not befitting this حديث was made by معمر في الجامع وطبراني وأكتب وحيث وقال وقال وقبت وقبت رضي الله عنو من السبين وقل تعلموا الفرائضة قبل الظاننين لان أسلاب أسلاب وداله أسلام قبل فقاموا with بخاري وقاموا with these الظاننين قال يعني يعني الذين تتكلمون بالظان قد يكونوا قد يكونوا قد يكونون وجسائلان و أن بعض الناس يصلوا إلى القرآن و يصلوا إلى فس proposal و يصل إلى سؤالهم و يقولون يعتقد أنهم يكونون حلالا و يعتقد أنهم يكونون حراما و أني تستطيعون أن تستطيعون العلمي قبل أن يتصربون يتحركون العلمي من الاماعدات و يتواصلون سؤال هذه العلمية و تتعلم هذه العلمية و تتحلقون لكم و منع الناس لا أموت من المعرفة.  وقال عبد الرحمن ابن يزيد من جابل رحمه الله تعالى. he said from the ways of seeking knowledge also. it's taking knowledge from those people who are known or who are known to have sought knowledge in the correct way. إذا لا يأخذوا العلم إلا عمان شوهد له بالطلب. You don't take knowledge except from someone who has been bore witness for that he has sought knowledge. As for someone coming out randomly and we today again today I repeat this today is a time of fitna where anyone can open a social media page. Anyone can make a YouTube video. Anyone can speak about the Deen of Allah سبحانه وتعالى without any accountability in this dunya or by other people. And how do we combat that? And that is by only taking knowledge from the people who we know their people of knowledge. They have sought knowledge they were known. شوهده له بالطلب. People have witnessed that this person was a seeker of knowledge. And he grew up and he was seeking knowledge and he graduated from with a sheikh. He was with a teacher and he left the teacher and the teacher said go and teach. If a person he was not known to seek knowledge you ask his local masjid. He was this person. We don't know what they say. He just started practicing yesterday. You asked the حلقة لوق القرآن حلقة. Was he ever part of the Qur'an? Learn in the Qur'an here? Nope. Never. He never learned the Qur'an here. You asked the لوق تيجة لوق شيخ. Did he seek knowledge from you? No. He didn't seek knowledge from us. You asked his own parents. No. He just started practicing yesterday. Even we don't understand how he's making a YouTube video. He just started learning Deen of Allah yesterday. He's not knowledgeable. Right. You asked the people of knowledge. Who is this person? We don't know. You asked the students of knowledge in the area. Who is he? We don't know. He's not a person of knowledge. He's a random person. He's just like this person you don't think knowledge from. As for the opposite is true. He was a student of knowledge from a young age. People used to see him on the street with his books. Right. He would come out at a young age. He would come out with his books. Going to the circles of knowledge. You asked his family. Yes. He was seeking knowledge at a young age. You asked his parents. Yes. He was seeking knowledge at a young age. You asked his teacher. Or the teacher in the local area. Yes. We know him. He was someone who was seeking knowledge with us for 10-20 years. You asked his fellow students. He was one of our students in the class. He was top of the class. Second in the class. Third in the class. Yes. He was like this. This is the kind of person. And then the teacher said yes. He could teach. This is the kind of person you take knowledge from. There's not something minor. There's not something small. Because wallahi. This Deen. The knowledge that you're taking. It's part of your Deen. Your religion. You're going to be asked about it on the day of judgment. You're going to be asked about something that you got from. Allah سبحانه وتعالى. He asked you where did you get this from? You say this guy is a random guy from YouTube. I heard. I heard people saying something. So I said it. I believed something because that person said it. المحمد رحمه الله وتعالى. He says I'm going to be brought on the day of judgment. في سلاسل. In chains. In chains I'm going to be brought. And I'm going to be asked where did you get this from? You said something. You had an opinion. Where did you get it from? And he's going to say I took it from. وكيع من جراح. My teacher. And so the chains will be taken away from me. وكيع will be brought in chains. And you'll be asked where did you get it from? You say I got it from Sufiana 30. And so he'll be let free. And so Sufiano will be asked. And until the Ibn Masrood is asked. And he'll say I took it from the Prophet ﷺ. And so they will be let free. There's knowledge you're going to be asked about it. So don't take it from anyone. Don't take this deen from anyone. Be careful of who you take knowledge from. Someone who's known to have sought knowledge in the correct way. This is who you take knowledge from. وقال مالك الرحمه الله. The last episode that we're going to go through is about مالك. When he said. كان الرجل يختلف إلى الرجل 30 سنة يتعلم منه. That a man would go constantly in and out with a person. With one teacher. He would go to his teacher for 30 years learning from him. 30 years learning from his teacher. What is he learning from him? Is it just mere information? No. This knowledge and the deen of Allah ﷺ isn't just mere information. He's taken from him. Yes, you may have finished the curriculum with the teacher. But he's still taking from him the way that he answers questions. The way he behaves. His mannerisms. This knowledge is passed down. Not only his information. It's also passed down as characteristics. Manorisms of the Prophet ﷺ. The way the Prophet ﷺ used to walk. The way he used to talk. The way he used to answer. The way he used to even turn his head. How would he speak? أحمد, as I mentioned to you guys before. 5,000 people will be attended with him. Only 4,500 will be right. Only 500 will be right. 4,500 will just be watching him. Look at how his mannerisms. So when مالك was told by his mother. Learn from ربيعه. His mannerisms before you take from his knowledge. Right? And the scholars they used to say. أنتم إلى قليل من الأدب. أحواج إلى كثير من العلم. You need little manners. You guys need little manners more than you need a lot of knowledge. Just some manners is important. Learn about how you should carry yourself as a person of knowledge. 30 years. This is when you take knowledge. This is when you... 30 years. This is the time that they would take. That they would take in order to gain this knowledge. And to come out as a person of knowledge who is appointed to. This is now a person of knowledge who we should go back to. Because it took 30 years out of his life. But today people want quick knowledge. 5 years, 2 years, 1 year. And they want to come out as the مفتي of the country. No, that's not the way it works. That's not the way it works. Because when it comes to knowledge. When people are going to come out in a small period of time. And they start teaching straight away. This is when the corruption occurs. This is when danger happens. Because that person, he didn't take from his teacher how to give an answer. He didn't take from his teacher when to give an answer. Some people, they might say these scholars. They're scholars who don't speak about what's needed to be spoken about. That scholar you're speaking about. He's been teaching and he's been learning for 50, 60 years. And you've been learning for 2 or 2 years. And you're speaking about this person. Because he knows when to speak. He knows how to speak. And if we're commanded to have good thoughts. Good assumptions about our Muslim brothers. Or about the scholars. We have to have good assumptions of them as well. No doubt. These scholars, they took from the people of knowledge. And they took the ways of answering. And they took how to answer. And that was what they needed to do for 30 years. This author was written by أبو نوعي ملصبهاني. In حلية الأولياء. والله تعالى أعلم. صلى الله عليه وعالا نبينا محمد وعاليه وصحابه. ومن تبعهم بحسان الله ومدين. الحمد لله رب العالمين. السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته. How can you do a 2 second action right now. That will give you a share of the reward of everything we're doing on this YouTube channel. Simple. Like this video and click subscribe. Why? It will allow YouTube to recommend our videos to other users. And imagine the huge amount of reward that could be waiting for you on the day of judgment. If you did that with a sincere intention of spreading the Dean of Allah. You'll be rewarded for every single person who benefits from one of our videos as a result of your like or subscribe. It's an easy 2 second action that you definitely don't want to miss out on. Do it now. Click like and subscribe. And don't forget to make that intention.