Questioner: Assalamu Alaikum,Huzoor. My question relates to the earlier question asked about Sadaqa, sir.
Huzoor (rh): About?
Questioner: Sadaqa.
Huzoor (rh): Yes.
Questioner: Firstly, could you kindly tell us where do we derive this word Sadaqa, what does it actually mean, secondly sir, how does it change the so-called bad eventualities one expects and if God Almighty has already ordained something, how can we change by Sadaqa, sir?
Huzoor (rh): What do you mean by this last bit? I can’t understand this.
Questioner: Sir, they say that if you expect…
Huzoor (rh): You mean if by giving Sadaqa, you attempt to put off…
Questioner: Avoid… Yes, sir.
Huzoor (rh): Avoid some certain event which you don’t like.
Questioner: That’s right, sir.
Huzoor (rh): How would you, compromise it with the question of destiny, predestination.
Questioner: Yes sir.
Huzoor (rh): On that I have already spoken many a time before, haven’t I, in your presence here? Predestination as such and how is it related to, why are you attaching it to Sadaqa? Why not with your own profession? Yes? You are conveniently avoiding reference to your profession by which you live. If everything is predestined and somebody must die after, with disease or must suffer with disease, what do you mean by trying to cure people? Is it a fraud?
Questioner: You caught me there, sir. You caught me there.
Huzoor (rh): Of course I have. So the answer you concocted ultimately would stand good for the Sadaqa as well, you see?
Questioner: Where do we derive this word Sadaqa from?
Huzoor (rh): Sadaqa in Arabic, it is used to, not in the sense that to ward off evil something is spent. Sadaqa is any spending in a good cause, whatever that cause be and it must have its relationship to the word siddh, which means truth. So let’s call it true spending, spending in the cause of truth. The real spending, which is the spending, except from Sadaqa, which covers a very wide field of expenditure in a good cause, what are you left with? Spending on your own self, on your children, on friends for whom you want to gain their love, not love of Allah. Or you waste your money, this and that. All that is in fact left in this world. What goes across the barrier of death is what you spend in the good cause. So this is the true spending, the real spending and the Holy Prophet of Islam, Hazrat Rasul-e-Karim sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, has also drawn our attention to this fact very clearly. That even to the point that he tells us that that which you do not spend, come to that, that is not yours either, because that you leave to your children and to the progeny or to the society. What belongs to you is only that money which you spend in the cause of Allah, because that is loyal to you. It keeps you company in the next world, that all the rest of the spending is left here. So perhaps Sadaqah has that connotation of “Sidq” about it.
