What is the criterion for the Prophet’s (peace and blessings be upon him) prohibition of excessive adornment, and what is excluded from that?

The questioner : Regarding excessive adornment, O Shaykh, does this apply to vehicles, like cars and such?

The Shaykh : By Allah, if one intends to display ornamentation and adornment, and that sort of thing.

The questioner : It does not mean that a person buys a car of the most luxurious and most expensive kind.

The Shaykh : Yes.

The questioner : It may not be any car at all.

The Shaykh : This is what is said regarding clothing as well; a person buys clothes according to his financial status. In our Sunnah, the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) bought a garment—I forget how much it was, but it was at a high price, meaning dinars instead of dirhams. This varies from person to person; it varies according to the individual. The point is to stay away from arrogance, as mentioned in the hadith: “Indeed, Allah is beautiful and loves beauty.” One of us likes to see his clothes looking good. Is that arrogance? He said, “No, no, no,” and so on. So, a luxurious car is appropriate to the owner’s financial status, if that is what you are doing with your car, like what Abu Faris complained about today.
The student : That it is beyond what I can afford, that they are bearing the cost of the car.

The Shaykh : Hahaha. The point is what I wanted to remind you of, which is that a person sometimes displays himself, sometimes not, as he (peace be upon him) said in another hadith: , but he does not make that his constant habit, like this and that. This is what I wanted to remind you of.