“Islam is the crown of the poor.”

Commentary:

John Gilbert Leonard, known as Shahidullah Faridi (d. 1978), is perhaps the best-known of those English Muslims who have succeeded on the Path to their Lord. After converting to Islam he followed the great sage of Ajmer, Zauqi Shah, having seen him years previously in a dream. Under his tutelage Hazret Shahidullah became one of the saints of Allah at the age of forty. His parents were millionaires and sent him gifts, trying to persuade him to return to his inheritance in England, but he chose what Allah chose for His messenger, namely, the way of voluntary poverty. Often ill and sometimes hungry, he travelled across India, and then settled in Karachi, where his tiny home was open to all comers. Thirty years after his death his name is held high, while the names of Pakistan’s rulers cause all to frown. This is the meaning of the Holy Prophet’s ﷺ words: ‘Poverty is my pride.’ It is the sign of lived solidarity with the poor, who ‘shall be resurrected five hundred years before the rich.’ (Hadith).

Concerning the true sages, Hazret Shahidullah wrote this:

If they neglected the world, it was only as far as their own wants were concerned; they never neglected the wants of those who came to them for spiritual nourishment, or even for physical nourishment if they had any to spare, for in addition to being at the service of those who were hungry for the things of the soul, they often conducted public kitchens for the feeding of the poor, and engaged themselves in the healing of the sick in body as well as those who were sick in spirit.

Shaykh Abdal-Hakim Murad

(Source: Commentary on the Eleventh Contentions, Contention No. 96, Pgs. 167-168)