Charity (sadaqa)

الصدقة

Charity in the usage of the Forty hadiths 25 and 26 is wider than alms of money: the poor Companions supposed there was no charity without wealth, until the Prophet directed them to charities within their power — glorification, magnification, praise, the declaration of unity, commanding right and forbidding wrong, removing harm from the road, aiding the weak, guiding the blind, making the deaf and mute understand, pointing out needs, running to the distressed, and 'in the intercourse of one of you is alms' — all of it a charity from a man upon himself; Hudhayfa's hadith in Muslim runs 'every act of kindness is charity' and Abu Masud's in the two Sahihs 'a man's spending on his family is charity'; in Abu Hurayra's hadith a charity is due on every sulama — joint or small hollow bone, three hundred and sixty joints in one version — each day the sun rises, and two mid-morning rak'as suffice for all of them in the Abu Dharr and Burayda routes; for Ibn Rajab the apparent sense is that a permissible act such as intercourse earns reward by an intention like seeking a righteous child or self-restraint, and al-Nawawi draws from it that permissible things become acts of obedience through sincere intentions.