These texts expose the errors of several groups:

One group downplays the prescribed means, regarding their use as a deficiency in, or a compromise of, affirming Allah’s oneness and relying upon Him. They consider abandoning these means a perfection of both. In this they are confused, and their error may be compounded by following their desires as they settle into idleness. Thus, you find that most people of this kind, who abandon the means they have been commanded to use, become attached to inferior means.

Either they attach their hearts to created beings in hope and fear, or their excessive devotion to reliance upon Allah leads them to abandon obligatory or recommended deeds that would benefit them more. An example is someone who concentrates all his resolve, in his reliance upon Allah, on recovering from illness without medicine or obtaining his provision without effort. This may indeed happen, but taking a simple medicine, making a modest effort, and directing that resolve and devotion towards righteous action would benefit him more. Indeed, that might be a greater duty upon him than devoting himself exclusively to this minor matter, worth a dirham or so.

Further still are those who regard even reliance upon Allah and supplication as a deficiency and a separation from the spiritual elite, imagining that contemplating what has already been settled by divine decree is the spiritual state of the elite.

Yet He says in this hadith:

“All of you are hungry except those whom I feed, so ask Me for food, and I will feed you.”

He also says:

“Ask Me for clothing, and I will clothe you.”

In al-Tabarānī or another source, it is reported that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said:

“Let each of you ask his Lord for everything he needs, even the strap of his sandal when it breaks, for unless He makes it easy, it will not be easy.”

Such a person may consequently also have to place seeking Allah’s guidance and acting in obedience to Him in the same category.