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IslamQA: What made me decide to be a scholar? Can women be Islamic scholars?

As salamu alaykum brother. What made you decide to pursue a path to become a scholar? Where do one start on such path? Is it appropriate for a girl to do it? Wont it make it difficult for me to find a husband?

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

Alhamdulillah it has always been easy for me to master any topic and get really good at it. I kept wondering what I should use my abilities for because I was interested in so many topics. I would love to have nothing to do but read endless books on economics, or philosophy, or history, or mathematics, or English literature, or the study of human behavior (ethology, genetics, and evolutionary psychology).

I realized that great discoveries in most fields would be made with or without me due to so many people being involved with them. If you don’t find the answer to an important question in mathematics, chances are another mathematician will find it sooner or later. But when it came to Islamic studies, I realized that the field didn’t have enough capable individuals working in it to revolutionize it. I had been studying Islam casually since my childhood, but at the end of 2017 I made my decision to fully dedicate myself to Islamic studies. 

It would be great for more women to get into Islamic studies. Any man who considers it a negative thing for you to be a scholar is not worth marrying anyway. 

As for where to start, you can check out this page on my site: The Modern Islamic Studies Curriculum. You can read anything that interests you and that will usually lead you to more interesting books. Regardless of what topic you want to study, the only important thing is to read what interests you. As long as a book or paper is interesting it means it has things to teach you.

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