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And I want you to pay very close attention to what I'm saying here.

When you say iBada or someone is abid, someone's a worshipper,

there's an entire spectrum of what that means.

There is a person who's a worshipper in that he praised the five prayers,

he fasts Ramadan, he does the obligatory things, and he prays his sunnah, and maybe he prays the five prayers, he fast Ramadan, he does the obligatory things, and he

prays his sunen, and maybe he fasts Monday and Thursday. And there is a person who immerses himself

further in Ibad, immerses himself further in worship. And in the process of full immersion, starts to

maybe pray quayam al-lil, pray the night prayer, and fasts maybe an extra three days of the

month or increases even upon that.

The spectrum of iBada is large.

The spectrum of what it means to be a worshipper is large.

Likewise, when you hear these narrations and you hear these references to people

who have knowledge, I don't want you to just think about, oh, this is referring to someone

who has this degree and then that degree and then that degree. Like Hadith I talks about a bachelor's

degree and then a master's degree and then a PhD, or that this is a distinction that is clearly made just by the virtue of the papers that we

pass around and the titles that we pass around in our lives.

The point of these types of narrations is to extract not just fadl al-aul al-a'an, the virtue of a scholar over a worshipper,

but the virtue of knowledge that is learned and spread over worship that is contained within

yourself. And the Islamic methodology to reading these types of texts

is that you then color the rest of your life with this.

The virtue of learning something yourself

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