Toi: You missed my point. All learning should be done lishma. But an am ahaaretz in halacha should decide to learn halachos, which can also be learnt lishma. I would think one who doesn’t care about his personal obligations to god, is not really learning Torah Lishma. It’s learning Torah for his own personal reasons, such as personal enjoyment, not enough time etc.
See Rashi Avos 1:17 on “Velo hamidrash hu ha’ikar, ela hama’ase”, that one who does the mitzva is greater than the one who learns and doesn’t do the mitzvos. I would say that one who doesn’t know halachos doesn’t do pretty much any of the mitzvos properly.
Also see the bartenura in the same spot. He says exactly my point that one who learns only gets most of the reward for actually doing the ma’asim in the end.