unbelief. The person who says this must be called upon to repent; if he repents, well and good; otherwise, he is to be put to death. Allah, glorified be He, is Self-Sufficient, while all creatures are in need of Him.

Allah Most High says:

“Allah has certainly heard those who said, ‘Allah is poor, and we are rich.’ We shall record what they said and their killing of the prophets without right, and We shall say, ‘Taste the punishment of the blazing Fire.’”

If He has threatened those who said that He is poor with this punishment, what, then, of someone who calls Him “poverty”? The verbal noun is more emphatic than the adjective. If He is exalted above being described in such terms, how can the verbal noun be made a name for Him?

If someone were to say, “By that I meant that poverty is seeking Allah,” but nothing in the context warranted believing his explanation, it would not be accepted from him. If the context did allow his explanation to be believed, he would be forbidden to use misleading wording and instructed to use appropriate wording.

As for the aforementioned hadith he quoted, namely:

“Poverty is my pride, and in it I take pride,”

it is a fabricated lie. No scholar knowledgeable in hadith has narrated it from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. Its meaning is also false, for the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, did not boast of anything. Rather, he said:

“I am the foremost of the children of Adam, and I say this without boasting.”

He also said in the hadith:

“It has been revealed to me that you should be humble, so that no one boasts over another and no one oppresses another.”

Had he taken pride in anything, he would have taken pride in that with which Allah had favored him above all other creation.