When Allah—glorified be He—wills to help you, He opens the way to that help, whether by means you can identify or by means unknown to you. At times He may aid you through a cause you never noticed, shielding you from a harm no one could withstand; at other times He may assist you through one of His creatures, subjugating that person and making him inclined to serve you. Yet even then, when Allah helps you at someone’s hands, you must not forget the true Causer of causes—Allah. Unfortunately, some ignorant people today become attached to the outward means and place little reliance on Allah once they see obvious aid coming from unbelieving nations. They fail to realize that the unbelievers remain their enemies until the Day of Resurrection, whether they help them or not. The One who grants benefit and inflicts harm is Allah alone, and what has happened is merely His subjugating—exalted is He—those people for the sake of His believing servants, as the hadith says: “Allah surely supports this religion even by means of a wicked man.”

Therefore we must never forget Allah’s favor in having employed those people for us, and we must caution the general public. If we hear someone leaning toward them and saying, “They are the ones who gave us victory one hundred percent; they were the first and the last,” we are obliged to explain that such words betray a flaw in tawḥīd (pure monotheism). Allah knows best.

The Prophet’s words, “Know that if the whole community were to gather to benefit you with something, they could never benefit you except with what Allah has already written for you,” show that even if the entire nation were to