He was asked about the Creator—glory be to Him:

“Does He lead astray and guide?”

He replied:

Everything in existence is created by Him; He created it through His will and power. Whatever He wills comes to pass, and whatever He does not will does not come to pass. He is the One who gives and withholds, lowers and raises, honours and humiliates, enriches and impoverishes, leads astray and guides, and grants happiness and brings misery. He grants sovereignty to whomever He wills and takes it away from whomever He wills. He opens the heart of whomever He wills to Islam, and makes the heart of whomever He wills constricted, as though he were climbing into the sky.

He turns hearts: every heart of His servants is between two fingers of the Most Merciful. If He wills to set it straight, He sets it straight; and if He wills to make it deviate, He makes it deviate. He is the One who has endeared faith to the believers and made it beautiful in their hearts, and has made disbelief, wickedness and disobedience hateful to them. Those are the rightly guided. He is the One who makes the Muslim a Muslim and the worshipper one who prays.

Abraham, the intimate friend of Allah, said:

“Our Lord, make us both submissive to You, and from our descendants a community submissive to You.”

He also said:

“My Lord, make me one who establishes prayer, and make some of my descendants so as well.”

Allah Most High says:

“And We made from among them leaders guiding by Our command when they were patient.”

He says of Pharaoh’s people:

“And We made them leaders inviting to the Fire.”

Allah Most High says:

“Indeed, man was created