Then He said: “And those who hoard up gold and silver and do not spend it in the path of Allah…” This verse covers everyone who withholds stored wealth instead of discharging the obligatory expenditure in Allah’s cause, and no deed is more deserving of the designation “the path of Allah” than jihad—whether the hoarder be a king, a commander, a rich man, or anyone else.

If the warning embraces whatever wealth (1) a person has inherited or earned and then hoarded, it applies even more forcefully to the hoarding of communal funds to which the whole Ummah is entitled and which (2) serve their public interests most of all.

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Section

Once part of the meaning of “believer” and “hypocrite” has become clear, whoever reads Sūrah al-Aḥzāb and, on the basis of what is related in the hadith, tafsīr, fiqh, and accounts of the Prophetic campaigns, understands the circumstances in which the Qur’an was revealed, and then sets that incident beside the present one—will find, in confirmation of what we have said (3), that the people on that occasion likewise split into the same three categories, and that many of the seemingly ambiguous matters are thereby clarified.

Allah opened the sūrah with His words: “O Prophet, fear Allah and do not obey the disbelievers and the hypocrites” (al-Aḥzāb 33:1), and within it He says: “And give glad tidings to the believers that they shall receive from Allah a great favor.”