“And give (O Prophet!) glad tidings to those… whose hearts shiver whenever Allah is mentioned, who patiently bear whatever affliction comes to them, who establish Prayer, and who spend (for good purposes) out of what We have provided them.”
(Al-Qur’ān – 22:34-35)
These verses of the Holy Qur’ān record some salient characteristics of believers. One of them is that they spend out of what Allah has provided them. Allah never calls the things that are unlawfully earned or are inherently impure His sustenance (rizq). The meaning of this verse, therefore, is that believers spend out of the lawful and wholesome sustenance bestowed on them by God. Again, this spending is not to be understood in its absolute sense. For the spending which is approved by Islam consists of spending to meet the legitimate needs of oneself and one’s family, spending to assist one’s relatives, neighbours and the needy, spending to support acts of public welfare, and spending in order to generously contribute to efforts aimed at upholding the Word of God. The Qur’ān does not sanction extravagant expenditure, nor spending on luxury, nor excessive ostentatious spending to display one’s piety. Such spending is not infāq, because it is not sufficiently meritorious. Such forms of expenditure are in fact condemned as extravagant and wasteful.
At the same time, the Qur’ān does not approve of a person being stingy and niggardly in his spending, of spending so sparingly that one’s dependents live in unduly straitened circumstances, spending on oneself much less than is warranted by one’s financial position, or an aversion to providing assistance to God’s creatures. Whatever a person spends in this way is not deemed, in Islamic parlance, as infāq. It is rather considered bukhl (miserliness; niggardliness) or shuhh al-nafs (covetousness; avarice).