Posted by Abu Iyaad
Translated
July 1995
Filed under Fiqh & ʿIbādah
Allāh’s Messenger (صلى الله عليه وسلم) said, relating from His Lord:
Indeed Allāh said: “We have sent down wealth (and belongings) so that the prayer is established and charity is given and if the son of Ādam was given a valley (of wealth and belongings) he would crave for another one, and if he had two valleys he would crave for a third. Nothing will fill the stomach of the son of Ādam except dust. Then Allāh will turn to whoever turned to Him.”[1]
Allāh (عز وجل) sends down wealth, with the meaning of bringing into existence through His creative power, and places it in the hands of people so that they may establish and proclaim the symbols of the religion. The greatest of these symbols, after His Tawḥīd, are prayer and obligatory charity. This is placing wealth in its proper place.
The obvious and immediate purposes of wealth as commonly understood such as keeping the body sustained and being protected from the elements through an abode and what is similar are not ends in themselves, but means to the end which is allowing prayer to be established and charity to be given.
However, the ḥadīth indicates that wealth is beautified and beloved to the hearts such that a man always seeks more and more, not becoming satisfied with what he has, despite the fact that his inevitable end will be death and his belly becoming filled with dust.
Footnotes
1. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Jāmiʾ al-Ṣaghīr (no. 1781)