It is a must to learn this religion with teacher. 

Can one be an engineer just by reading books?

A doctor wannabe disagree to learn from any medical university, and just learn from books and learn alone. will he get to be a doctor?where can he gain the permission to be a doctor?

learn about operation/surgery only from books. but he learn alone for 10years. do you want him to operate on you?

one learn about civil engineering from books about 10years alone without teacher. will you aks him to build a 100 levels of building for you? even one who wanted to build a small house not brave enough to let him build it. 

because he doesnt have that permission from someone or any specialist in that particular thing to allow him to proceed it. 

a doctor needs to learn for years to gain a permission to be proceeded being a doctor.  

now that is only the ilmu of dunya. let alone the ilmu of islam, the most important ilm to Allah swt. 

if one learns without a teacher then whos gonna be his teacher? syaitan. 

ilm is suppose to be taken from the chest of ulama. books tend to be wrong. error in its writing, typing error, etc, hadith - its translation could be wrong, our understanding upon it could be wrong.

theres one man read a book, about one hadith, 

‘alhayatul sauda’ syifaul li kulli da’’ - black snake is a cure for every disease. 

and suddenly his daughter get sick. he search a black snake, and cook it and give it to his daughter. and she died. 

and then he went to meet a alim/sheikh asking why it was not working yet its from the hadith of rasulullah saw. he brought the kitab and showed it. 

the shaykh said, 

‘innalillahi wa inna ilaihi rojiun. this kitab has error on typing/writing. not  alhayatul sauda’ but alhabbatul sauda’(black caraway). ba has been changed to ya just because of extra dot and leads to other meaning. 

so is it true then to learn from a teacher is important?

-ustaz iqbal zain al jauhari