Surah Muhammad: Verse 38 - ها أنتم هؤلاء تدعون لتنفقوا... - English

تُدْعَوْنَ لِتُنفِقُوا فِي سَبِيلِ اللَّـهِ فَمِنكُم مَّن يَبْخَلُ "... you are called upon to spend in Allah's way, but some of you withhold in miserliness". Further the verse reads: وَمَن يَبْخَلْ فَإِنَّمَا يَبْخَلُ عَن نَّفْسِهِ (and he who withholds in miserliness withholds against himself - 47:38) it means that any person practising miserliness will himself suffer loss or detriment because he will have to carry the burden of failing to fulfill his obligation and thus will be deprived of reward in the Hereafter. This point is made even more clear by saying "_ and Allah is the Need-Free, and you are the needy." In other words, Allah is free of want and beyond any need but man is in need of means of comfortable subsistence. So spending in the way of Allah is for man's own good and to fulfill his own needs.

وَإِن تَتَوَلَّوْا يَسْتَبْدِلْ قَوْمًا غَيْرَ‌كُمْ ثُمَّ لَا يَكُونُوا أَمْثَالَكُم (...And if you turn away, He will replace you by some other people, then they will not be like you. - 47:38) This verse has explained that Allah is the most need-free of all. This attribute is described so lucidly that it brings to our mind the fact that let alone people's wealth, He does not even need their existence. If they stop acting upon His injunctions, He will bring another people who will not turn away from the sacred injunctions, but will obey Him completely as long as Allah wants to maintain the religion of truth, Islam. Sayyidna Hasan Basri (رح) says that the reference in this verse is to non-Arabs and Sayyidna ` Ikramah ؓ says that the reference is to Persians and Romans. Sayyidna Abu Hurairah ؓ reports that when Allah's Messenger ﷺ recited this verse in the presence of the Companions ؓ they asked him: "Who are those people that will be brought instead of us if we, God forbid, turn away from Allah's injunctions and those people will not turn away like us?" Sayyidna Salman Farisi ؓ عنہ was sitting among the Companions ؓ ، the Holy Prophet ﷺ slapped on his thigh and said: "If Faith [ i.e. the religion of truth ] were to go up to the Pleiades [ accessibility to which is difficult ], a man of Persian descent will acquire it from there and act upon it”.

Shaikh Jalal-ud-Din Suyuti wrote a book on the biography of Abu Hanifah (رح) where he identifies him and his disciples as being the people referred to in the Hadith quoted earlier, because no group among the Persians reached that high point of knowledge where Abu Hanifah (رح) and his disciples reached.