Five Ways of Understanding This Promise

People's understanding of this promise, and their trust in it, fall into a small number of distinct kinds. The disbeliever, the kāfir, holds that his rizq lies entirely in his own hands: without work, he dies; without money to buy what is needed, he dies — this, to his mind, is simply certain, and he believes himself in full and complete control of it. A second kind accepts that rizq comes from Allah (swt) but holds that Allah (swt) will not feed a person who does not work for it — belief in the source, joined to disbelief that the source alone suffices; this was the belief of the pagan Arabs, the mushrikīn, before Islam. A third kind, the munāfiq, the hypocrite — one who appears a Muslim outwardly but is not one within — believes that rizq is from Allah (swt), yet is never quite sure whether it will actually be given to him or not. A fourth kind, the fāsiq Muslim, fully believes that rizq comes from Allah (swt), and yet hastens toward what is unlawful in acquiring it regardless, insisting only that it reach him, careless of its source, giving no thought to the reckoning of the Day of Judgement that will follow. What such a person will in fact acquire was always going to reach him anyway, since Allah (swt) has promised as much; the danger such a person places himself in comes only from that same carelessness over whether the source is lawful.

The fifth kind is the ṣāliḥ, the sound believer, the good Muslim, who believes fully and completely that Allah (swt) is the guarantor of rizq, and who nonetheless leans upon asbāb, the causes — working toward the rizq that is to come, because it is by working through such causes that it is reached. Effort itself, though, is no guarantee of a particular outcome: one person may work ten times over and still find his own rizq modest, while a man holding two degrees finds little enough rizq of his own, and another, unable even to sign his own name, finds his earnings flowing to him without end, whatever he does. A true Muslim's own duty is simply to work in the best manner possible, as hard as possible, while it remains entirely for Allah (swt) to decide when that rizq comes and how much of it there is, and to delay it or not as He wills. Whatever comes is understood, in the end, to come from Allah (swt) alone, who is the guarantor of rizq for all.