Can a Muslim Get Rich?

In this lecture Belal Assaad sets out to correct common misconceptions Muslims hold about wealth and materialism, opening with a blunt question: can a Muslim be rich? His answer is an emphatic yes — and more than that, being resourceful and wealthy is actively encouraged in the Quran and Sunnah as a means to support one's family, the community, and the cause of Allah. He grounds this in the hadith that the giving hand is better than the receiving hand, and that a person should spend first on those who depend on them. The Prophet ﷺ taught that obligatory spending on your wife, children, and dependents is the best charity of all, and that the next-best charity is what remains beyond your own needs. Neglecting your family — even to give to others — is impermissible; their rights come first. A central theme is the misconception that leaving wealth to your children shows a lack of trust in Allah's provision. The speaker uses Surah An-Nisa (4:9) — "let those fear who would leave behind weak offspring" — and the famous hadith of Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas, whom the Prophet ﷺ stopped from giving away more than a third of his estate, to argue the opposite: Allah provides both directly and through the effort He commanded us to make, so leaving your family financially secure is more beloved to Allah than leaving them to beg. He then explores why the Prophet ﷺ sought refuge from disbelief (kufr) and poverty (faqr) in the same breath. Scholars explain that poverty can drive a person to desperation, to selling their dignity, to dealing in haram to survive, and even to ingratitude or acts of disbelief. He is careful to note that a person forced into haram purely to survive is excused — but the point stands that poverty is spiritually dangerous, which is why the Prophet ﷺ, though he chose an ascetic life, never loved poverty nor was truly poor. The speaker showcases wealthy companions — noting that seven of the ten promised Paradise were affluent, that Abdur-Rahman ibn Awf's wealth would run into hundreds of millions today, and that even those who started poor, like Ali (ra), were taught by the Prophet ﷺ to trade and profit. A Muslim, he argues, invests, trades, educates themselves on halal and haram earning and spending, and only then pursues wealth freely. He balances this firmly: wealth is a test just as poverty is. The verse "accumulation has made you heedless" is about how a person approaches wealth, not wealth itself. What matters is obedience, worship, and whether wealth enters the heart and breeds stinginess, arrogance, and heedlessness. He warns against habitual, unnecessary borrowing, walking through the Prophet's ﷺ reluctance to pray over one who died in debt, and unpacking the longest verse in the Quran — the "ayah of debt" (2:282) — which commands believers to write down and witness their loans and contracts in careful detail, and even touches on transparency with one's spouse about money for the sake of inheritance rights. He closes on the heart. There are people who are financially independent yet controlled by their money, and people who are independent of their money — who hold an abundance mindset, know their provision is with Allah, give without fear of loss, and treat wealth as a means rather than an end. Allah loves to see the effect of His blessings on His servant; the believer wears and enjoys them with gratitude and humility, never letting wealth become the thing they truly worship.