Lesson 5 of 6 · What feeds it
Four. The sentence that ends the conversation
Ask Allah, not people.
It gets said kindly and it lands as a door closing. And it is not what the tradition does. The man who came to Ali asking for help was given a supplication and was not turned away. Qabisah came asking, and before he was taught anything he was told to wait until the sadaqah arrived so that it could be given to him. He was fed first. Then he was told the cases in which asking is permitted: a man who has taken on a payment on somebody else's behalf, a man struck by a calamity that has destroyed his property, and a man struck by poverty that three sensible people of his community will attest to.
This one is worth being exact about, because it gets quoted loosely and this course will not do that to you. Ordinary personal debt is not one of the three named cases. What the report establishes is narrower and it is still enough: asking has named legitimate cases, it is not shameful in itself, and the man who asked was given something before he was given a rule.
There is one more that deserves naming. The saying that poverty is close to disbelief. Our corpus holds three wordings pairing disbelief and poverty and not one of the three is soundly graded, so none of them appears here. That is a check we can show you rather than an opinion we are asking you to take on trust. What the saying does when it circulates is add a religious insult to a financial difficulty, which is the last thing anybody in this needs.
If you take one thing from this lesson, take this. The shame is not a byproduct of the money problem. It is a separate thing sitting on top of it, and it is the part that makes people stop opening the post, stop telling anyone, and stop asking for help that they are entitled to.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Qabisah came asking and was fed first, before he was taught anything. That is the answer to ask Allah, not people. Ordinary personal debt is not one of the three cases named afterwards, and nothing here pretends otherwise.
Qabisah b. Mukhiriq al-Hilali said :I became a guarantor for a payment, and I came to Messenger of Allah (May peace be upon him). He said: Wait till I receive the sadaqah and I shall order it to be given to you. He then said : Begging, Qabisah, is allowable only to one of three classes: a man who has become a guarantor for a payment to whom begging is allowed till he gets it, after which he must stop (begging); a man who has been stricken by a calamity and it destroys his property to whom begging is allowed till he gets what will support life (or he said, what will provide a reasonable subsistence); and a man who has been smitten by poverty, about whom three intelligent members of his people confirm by saying: So and so has been smitten by poverty, to such a person begging is allowed till be gets what will support life (or he said, what will provide a reasonable subsistence), after which he must stop (begging). Any other reason for begging, Qabisah, is forbidden, and one who engages in such consumes it as a thing which is forbidden
Sunan Abi Dawud 1640graded sound, albanithe Arabic and its grading
The man who came to Ali asking for help was given a supplication and was not turned away. He was given both, which is the point: the tradition does not use the words to close the door.
Ali [may Allah be pleased with him] narrated:that a Mukatib came to him and said: “Indeed I am not capable of my Kitabah so aid me.” He said: “Should I not teach you words that the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) taught me? If you had a debt upon you similar to the mountain of Sir, Allah would fulfill it for you. He said: ‘Say: O Allah, suffice me with Your lawful against Your prohibited, and make me independent of all those besides You (Allāhummakfinī biḥalālika `an ḥarāmika, wa aghninī bi faḍlika `amman siwāka).’”
Jami' at-Tirmidhi 3563graded sound, albanithe Arabic and its grading