He was also asked: (*)
What do the jurists—may Allah be pleased with them—say concerning a man who says:
“Poverty is not something we have been required to practise as worship, nor have we been commanded to pursue it. It has neither substance nor meaning, and it is not a path leading to the pleasure of Allah Most High or His Messenger. Rather, Allah has required us to worship Him by obeying His commands and avoiding His prohibitions, as set out in the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of His Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. The foundation of everything is knowledge, worship based upon it, acting upon it, mindfulness of Allah, and scrupulous avoidance of forbidden things.
“What the Sufis and their leading masters call ‘poverty’ is detachment from this world. Such detachment is acquired through knowledge of the revealed law. Detachment from this world thus consists in acting upon knowledge, and this is poverty. Accordingly, poverty is a branch of knowledge; that is how the matter stands. There is no more effective path than knowledge and acting upon it in accordance with what has been authentically established from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace.”
He also says:
“What is called poverty, as understood by most of those who wear the prescribed garb in these times—with its customary dress, expressions, and terminology—is pleasing neither to Allah nor to His Messenger.”
Is the matter as he says, or otherwise? Give us a legal opinion; may you be rewarded.
(*) Shaykh Nāsir ibn Hamad al-Fahd stated (p. 94):
This fatwa is entitled “A Question on Poverty and Sufism.” Its text is coherent from the beginning (p. 25) through the fifth line of p. 29. Thereafter, material unrelated to the original fatwa appears: the discussion concerns the origin of the designation “Sufis,” then shifts to declaring the Ittihādiyya unbelievers. The passage in question reads:
“Whoever says that ‘Sufi’ derives from al-suffa (the shaded platform), al-safā (purity), al-saff al-awwal (the first row), Sūfa ibn Bishr ibn Udd ibn Tābikha, or sūfat al-qafā (the fine hair at the nape)—[the coherent text of the fatwa ends here; immediately afterward comes:] these people are more unbelieving than Jews and Christians. Yet some people have perceived the distinction in certain matters but not others, distinguishing between the believer and the unbeliever but not between the righteous and the wicked …”
It is quite obvious to everyone that this material is unrelated to what precedes it. The preceding wording is “Whoever says that ‘Sufi’ means such-and-such,” and, as the text now stands, the consequent clause answering “whoever” is “these people are more unbelieving than Jews …” This is false and certainly not what was intended. That is the first point. Another is that the preceding discussion concerned the meaning of poverty and the designation “Sufis,” before shifting to the Ittihādiyya’s doctrine concerning divine command and predestination!
I initially thought that some lines or pages had been omitted between these two passages in the fatwa entitled “A Question on Poverty and Sufism,” causing the textual incoherence. However, it became clear to me that the entire remainder of this fatwa had been omitted at this point. The material appearing afterward belongs instead to another treatise by Shaykh al-Islām, may Allah have mercy on him, included in volume ten (10:666–677), entitled “A Question on Gracious Withdrawal, Gracious Pardon, and the Categories of Godfearingness and Patience.” The material reproduced here begins in the treatise on “Gracious Withdrawal” at 10:670, line twelve. Immediately before the wording with which the inserted passage begins, he says:
“As for someone who beholds al-haqīqa al-kawniyya (the reality of the created order) and tawhīd al-rubūbiyya (the oneness of divine lordship), which encompasses all creation, acknowledges that all servants are subject to divine decree and predestination, and conducts himself according to this reality, making no distinction between the believers and the Godfearing who obey Allah’s command, with which He sent His messengers, and those unbelievers and wicked people who disobey Allah and His Messenger—[the text reproduced in ‘A Question on Poverty’ begins here with:] these people are more unbelieving than Jews and Christians …” and continues to the end of the treatise.