BismillahirRahmanirRahim

The parable of those who spend
of their substance in the way of Allah
is that of a grain of corn:
It grows seven ears, and each ear has a hundred grains.
Allah gives manifold increase to whom He pleases;
And Allah cares for all and He knows all things.
Qur’an (2:261)

One Islamic understanding about charity is that money you give will directly bring reward to you, if not in this world but in the hereafter. Interestingly enough, the reward in this world has been directly measured and shown to have a distinct relationship to the money your give. That is right, as odd as it may sound to some, giving money has actually been economically proven to cause you to gain money!

SubhanAllah, the things Islam contains within it benefit people in this world and in the Day of Judgement. Of course, the secular article below attempts to explain it away with various worldly factors, but the prediction of this growth of wealth from giving is clear in the Quran. And Muslims know the source of all their sustenance is with their Lord.

Charity Makes Wealth – Portfolio.com [click for full article]

This is precisely what is found in the S.C.C.B.S. data: More giving doesn’t just correlate with higher income; it causes higher income. And not just a little. Imagine two families that are identical in size, age, race, education, religion, and politics. The only difference is that this year the first family gives away $100 more than the second. Based on my analysis of the S.C.C.B.S. survey, the first family will, on average, earn $375 more as a result of its generosity.

How can this be? Is it a statistical anomaly—or even a metaphysical phenomenon? While the link between giving and prosperity is not as mechanistic as returns on municipal bonds, there are some very earthbound explanations for it. Psychologists and neuroscientists have identified several ways that giving makes us more effective and successful. For example, new research from the University of Oregon finds that charity stimulates parts of the brain called the caudate nucleus and the nucleus accumbens, which are associated with meeting basic needs such as food and shelter—suggesting to the researchers that our brains know that giving is good for us. Experiments have also found that people are elevated by others into positions of leadership after they are witnessed behaving charitably.

The financial advantages of giving aren’t limited to individual givers. There is also evidence that donations push up income even more at the level of an entire nation’s economy. We can demonstrate this by looking at average household charity and per capita G.D.P. as they change over time. Charity and G.D.P. levels have moved together over the years. Corrected for inflation and population changes, U.S. government data show that G.D.P. per person in America has risen over the past 50 years by about 150 percent. At the same time, donated dollars per person have risen by about 190 percent.