Question...

Question: If this group of believers were truly going after the permissible ways of earning wealth and spending it in the right way, then surely their status and rank must be greater than the first group of people who have not earned anything!? For example, it has been mentioned that Imam ‘Ali (as) freed one thousand slaves with money that he himself earned - is this something bad?

Is there any virtue in refraining from earning wealth or does the virtue lie in the fact that one seeks the permissible livelihood and then spends the wealth in the way of Allah (SwT)? Answer: This is a conclusion drawn from an incorrect understanding of the tradition under discussion. If we properly understood the tradition, then this sort of question would never come up! If a person was to gather wealth in order to spend it in the way of Allah (SwT), then obviously, such a thing is very good.

However, the second group of people love the act of gathering and collecting wealth - meaning that their actual aim is to gain wealth and thus, they end up destroying the outcome of their efforts! If we were to understand all of the commandments of Islam, then we would definitely conclude that Islam prefers that a person work and then sacrifices the wealth he earns in the way of Allah (SwT).

If a person acts in this way and spends any wealth he gains in the way of Allah (SwT) and does not keep it for himself, he would have a rank higher than a Zahid (ascetic)! The third group of people are those who love to collect wealth. For them, it makes no difference if they earn it from the permissible means or the forbidden channels. Both the act of spending the wealth and the way in which they earn it are wrong!

If they spend some of their wealth in the way of Allah (SwT), then they do so in an extravagant manner and with no regard to how much they are spending - meaning that they spend without keeping in mind their needs and also of those who are truly deprived and could use the wealth.

On the other hand, if they do not spend their wealth, then they employ the most extreme forms of miserliness - these are people whose hearts have been enchanted by the transient world and due to their sins, shall enter into the hell fire. The true meaning of asceticism (Zuhd) is that one does not have an attachment to the transient world - it does not mean that one does not possess anything from the world!