Does the prosperity gospel align with Islamic finance or traditional spiritual teachings?

The prosperity gospel—the belief that God rewards the faithful with material wealth—is a modern invention, and it contradicts nearly every serious spiritual tradition I know. Rumi didn't write about riches; he wrote about poverty of spirit, about needing emptiness to be filled by longing. Islamic finance takes a different approach entirely. It forbids riba—interest, the extraction of wealth from debt—because it sees the accumulation of money divorced from real value as spiritually corrosive. Zakat and sadaqah aren't investments in divine returns; they're recognitions that wealth circulates, that hoarding is a kind of spiritual death. What both traditions understand is that money is a mirror. How you handle it shows you yourself. The prosperity gospel sees money as proof of favor. The older wisdom sees money as a test: Will you let it isolate you, or will you use it to remember your dependence on others, on earth, on something ineffable? Your financial life is devotional life. Not because God pays those who tithe, but because how you give and spend shapes whether you're awake or sleepwalking through your one existence. That's the real prosperity—attention itself.