puts his trust in Allah, He is sufficient for him.” [al-Talāq: 2–3] He thus placed trust after fear of Allah, which consists in taking the means He has commanded. Then, when a person puts his trust in Allah, He is sufficient for him (1). As He says elsewhere:

“Fear Allah, and let the believers put their trust in Allah.” [al-Mā’idah: 11]

Trusting in Allah and counting on His sufficiency without taking the commanded means is sheer helplessness. Even if it contains some measure of trust, it is trust born of helplessness. A servant should therefore neither turn his trust into helplessness nor treat his helplessness as trust. Rather, he should regard his trust as one of the commanded means, all of which are necessary to achieve the intended purpose.

Here, two groups of people have fallen into error:

The first claimed that trust alone is an independent means sufficient to attain the desired result. For its sake, they abandoned the means that Allah, in His wisdom, has ordained to lead to their effects. They thus fell into neglect and helplessness in proportion to the means they abandoned. Their trust grew weak precisely where they imagined it gained strength by being separated from those means. They concentrated all their concerns into a single concern. Although this has strength in one respect, it has weakness in another. While isolating trust strengthened that aspect, neglecting the means through which trust is exercised weakened it. For trust is exercised in the use of means, and its perfection lies in trusting Allah concerning them.

This is like the trust of a farmer who tills the soil, sows the seed, and trusts Allah concerning his crop and its growth. Such a person has given trust its due and has not weakened it by neglecting the land and leaving it fallow. The same applies to a traveller who trusts Allah to cover the distance while pressing diligently on his journey,