And Shaykh al-Islām said:

Section on the obligation to worship the Creator alone and place one’s trust in Him

One must act only for His sake and place one’s hope in Him alone. He, glorified be He, took the initiative in creating you and bestowing His blessings upon you through His own power over you, His will, and His mercy, without any cause whatsoever originating from you. No one else has the power to do what He has done for you.

Then, when you need Him to bring you provision or ward off harm, He alone brings that provision; no one else brings it. He alone wards off that harm; no one else wards it off (*).

As He, the Exalted, says:

“Or who is there that could be an army for you to aid you other than the Most Merciful? The disbelievers are only in delusion.”

“Or who is there that could provide for you if He withheld His provision? Yet they persist in insolence and aversion.”

He, glorified be He, Himself bestows blessings upon you and treats you with kindness. This necessarily follows from the names and attributes by which He has named and described Himself, for He is the Most Merciful, the Especially Merciful, the Most Loving, the Most Glorious. His power is inherent in Him and inseparable from His Essence, as are His mercy, knowledge, and wisdom. He has no need of His creation in any respect; rather, He is free of all need of the worlds:

“Whoever is grateful is grateful only for his own benefit; and whoever is ungrateful—indeed, my Lord is Free of need and Generous.”

“And when your Lord proclaimed, ‘If you are grateful, I will surely increase you; but if you are ungrateful, indeed, My punishment is severe.’”

“And Moses said, ‘If you and everyone on earth were to disbelieve, indeed, Allah is Free of need and Praiseworthy.’”

In the authentic hadith conveying Allah’s words:

“O My servants, if the first of you and the last of you, and the humans among you