As-salaamu 3laikum, I am living in a non-Muslim country and I want to know how we can know the authenticity of our teachers and books about Islam. There are no real scholars where we live and one or two of the people teaching us have been making doubtful statements. As there are many people in our community who want to learn about Islam, we often make use of the Internet and download books and so on. I am worried that there is no way to authenticate what we are learning from the Internet or to verify whether the people in our community that we think of as knowledgeable and trustworthy actually are. I have seen all of them making at least some errors. What should we do in this situation? I have been trying to verify information by checking it against a few different sources to see if they agree but I do not know if this is a valid methodology. Should we trust the books that are published in our country if we know nothing against them and lend them to each other, print out ahadith from websites like sunnah.com and show them to each other or do we have to give that up? Please note that we cannot fully trust the Islamic leaders in our country as they are very weak and are known for producing statements designed to reassure and please the non-Muslim majority in our country. In shaa Allah I will move to another area soon which may be better but I still don't know how to go about authenticating information about Islam. Please advise. Jazaakumu Allahu khairan

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

We ask Allaah to reward you generously for your keenness to seek beneficial knowledge and investigate the reliability of the sources and scholars from which you learn your religion; this is both commendable and desirable.

Muhammad ibn Seereen who was one of the great Taabi‘is (successors of the Prophet's Companions) said, “This knowledge is religion; so, be careful about the person from whom you learn your religion.”

Imaam Maalik said, “This knowledge is religion; so, scrutinize those from whom you learn your religion. I have met within these pillars - and he pointed to Al-Masjid An-Nabawi - seventy people who said, ‘The Messenger of Allaah said such and such..’ and I did not take anything from them. Had any of them been entrusted with public treasury, they would have proved trustworthy, but they were not worthy to undertake this business (i.e. narrating Hadeeth). Then when Muhammad ibn Shihaab Az-Zuhri arrived, we crowded at his door though he was a young man...”.

This indicates that one should learn knowledge from trustworthy scholars who are devoted to knowledge and do not only pretend to be. They should be pious and knowledgeable, from the followers of Sunnah, not followers of religious innovations as following the latter would bring about corruption of the heart and the poisoning of the mind. One of the righteous predecessors used to say, “It is from the grace of Allaah that He blesses a young man with a mentor from the devoted adherents of the Sunnah.”

However, a scholar is not infallible. He may commit an error, and not every error entails having an aversion to him, and not all errors are the same in terms of gravity. The errors related to ‘Aqeedah (creed) are not like those related to other subsidiary matters.

We are not able to pass judgment about the scholars or the Islamic literature available in your country. However, if the scholars or entities distributing those books are trustworthy, then in principle, you may benefit from them. If you harbor doubts about any matter, you can consult other reliable entities to verify the doubted information.

The website you referred to includes translations of much of the accepted Sunnah literature, such as Saheeh Muslim, Saheeh Al-Bukhari and the Hadeeth literature of Abu Daawood, An-Nasaa'i, At-Tirmithi, and Ibn Maajah and the like. However, we can not determine whether the translation is good or not because this requires examination of all those books.

For more information please, refer to Fatwa 21750 and 82688.

Allaah Knows best.