(165) K'ab bin ‘Eyaz related to us that he heard the Apostle of God: “For every community there is a special trial, and the special trial for my community is wealth.”
-Tirmidhi
Commentary.-It shows that during the Prophet's Apostleship [which began with his raising up and will endure till the end of time] the importance of wealth will grow so much and the desire to possess it become to excessive that it will prove to be the greatest mischief for his followers. [In the Quran, too, wealth has been called a mischief]. It is evident from history that the lust for worldly possessions has been increasing steadily from the time of the Prophet, and, undoubtedly, it is the greatest t mischief of the current era which has deprived innumerable bondmen of the Lord of true felicity by leading them on the path of folly and insolent disobedience. Things have gone so far now that even the champions of godlessness and atheism make use of economic issues to propagate their ideas.