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Fatwa CenterThe Authenticity of the Hadeeth, ‘If you do love me, then prepare and arm yourself against poverty...’
Question
Assalamu alaykum ...'If you do love me, then prepare and arm yourself against poverty. For indeed poverty comes faster upon whoever loves me than the flood to its destination.' (At-Tirmithi 2350) (As-silsila as-sahiha 6/790) How to understand this hadith? Does the love to the prophet (Sallallahu 'alayhi wassalam) necessitates poverty?
Answer
All perfect praise be to Allah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allah, and that Muhammad 
is His slave and Messenger.
The mentioned hadith was narrated by Al-Hakim, may Allaah have mercy upn him, in Al-Mustadrak and At-Tirmidhi 
in his Sunan. The scholars differed about the authenticity of the hadith's chain of transmission because, in the chain of transmission, there is a narrator whose name is Rawh bin Aslam Al-Bahili and there is a difference of opinion about him; Al-Bukhari said about him: “They talk about him negatively,” and he also said about him: “I do not write down the hadith of Rawh bin Aslam,” and An-Nasa'i, may Allaah hav mercy upon him, said: he is weak. Al-Daraqutni mentioned him in the book (The Weak and the Abandoned). Al-Albani mentioned the hadith in Al-Silsilah Al-Da'eefah under Hadith No. 1681, and he said about it “munkar.” And he said in Sunan At-Tirmidhi: “Weak”, and the same was said by al-Huwaini in his book "The Supererogatory acts in Weak and False Hadiths): “Weak”.
Sheikh Ibn Uthaymeen said: This hadith is not authentic from the Prophet because there is no connection between wealth and the love of the Prophet . There are rich people who love the Messenger and there are poor people who hate the Messenger [End Of Quote].
If we assume that the hadith is authentic and established, then it cannot be based on its general meaning because there is a rich person among the ten Companions who were promised Paradise.
Al-Sana'ani said in al-Tanweer, Sharh al-Jaami al-Sagheer: And know that it does not mean that everyone who loved him was poor, as it has been proven that the faith of a servant is not complete until he is more beloved to him than his own self and his money, which means the man who claimed to love the Prophet and swore to that - as if he made his test of poverty a sign of his acceptance and being with the one he loved. [End Of Quote].
Allah knows best.
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