some of the early Muslims said, “Whoever wishes to be the strongest of people, let him place his trust in Allah.”
In the two Ṣaḥīḥs it is reported from ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿUmar that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) is described in the Torah as follows: “We have sent you as a witness, a bearer of glad tidings, and a warner, a safeguard for the unlettered. You are My servant and My messenger; I have named you al-Mutawakkil (the one who relies on Allah). He is not harsh, hard-hearted, or loud in the marketplaces; he does not repay evil with evil, but rather repays evil with good and forgives. I shall not take him (in death) until, through him, I straighten the crooked religion, and by you I will open blind eyes, deaf ears, and sealed hearts, so that they declare: ‘There is no deity but Allah.’”
It has therefore been narrated that the bearers of the Throne are able to bear it only by saying: lā ḥawla wa lā quwwata illā biʾllāh (there is no might and no power except with Allah). In the two Ṣaḥīḥs the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said that this phrase is “a treasure from the treasures of Paradise.”
Allah, Exalted be He, says in Sūrat al-Ṭalāq: “Whoever puts his trust in Allah, He will suffice him.” He also says in Āl ʿImrān: “Those to whom people said, ‘The people have gathered against you, so fear them,’ but it only increased them in faith, and they replied, ‘Allah is sufficient for us and He is the best Guardian’… until His words: ‘So do not fear them, but fear Me, if you are believers.’”
In Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Ibn ʿAbbās said regarding the verse “Allah is sufficient for us and He is the best Guardian”: “Abraham, the Close Friend, said it when he was thrown into the fire, and Muhammad said it when people told him, ‘The people have gathered against you.’”
A second group bear witness to the Lordship of the True One and to their dependence on Him, and they seek His help only in pursuing their own whims and tastes, paying no regard to the reality of His command and prohibition, His pleasure and anger, or His love. This is the state of many who claim poverty (mutafaqqirah) and many Sufis. For that reason they often act on the ‘states’ through which they believe they can manipulate existence, without aiming at what pleases the Lord and what He loves. They frequently err, imagining that disobeying Him wins His pleasure; thus they nullify command and prohibition, call this “Reality,” and suppose that this so-called essential reality of the religious command actually contains the Lord’s pleasure, love, command, and prohibition, outwardly and inwardly.
Such people are often stripped of their spiritual states and may lapse into various sins and acts of disobedience; indeed, many of them even apostasize from Islam, for the final outcome belongs to piety, and whoever does not abide by Allah’s command and prohibition is not among the God-fearing. Consequently, they fall into some of what the idolaters fell into: at times adopting an innovation they imagine to be religion, and at other times using predestination as an argument against the divine command.
When Allah, exalted is He, mentioned in Sūrah al-Anʿām the blame He laid upon the idolaters, He referred to what they had innovated in the religion and elevated to the level of law, as He also says in al-Aʿrāf: “When they commit an indecency they say, ‘We found our fathers practising it, and Allah has commanded us to do it.’ Say: ‘Allah does not command indecency.’” He condemned them for forbidding what Allah had not forbidden and for legislating what He had not legislated, and He cited their appeal to predestination in His words in al-Anʿām: “Had Allah willed, we would not have associated partners, neither we nor our fathers; nor would we have made anything unlawful,”—and similar statements in an-Naḥl, Yā-Sīn, and az-Zukhruf. Such people are beset by the same confusion in both respects.