Tie Your Camel First

There was a case once where a man came to the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), into the courtyard of the masjid, not the prayer area itself, and said: O Messenger of Allah, shall I tie my camel first, somewhere safe, and then make tawakkul, relying on Allah (swt) that He will protect my camel — or shall I simply leave the camel on its own and say, inshāʾAllāh, Allah will take care of it, tawakkaltu ʿalā Allāh? Which of the two should he do? Unless the background is known, the question is not properly understood: he travelled with his camels, and, a sensible man, he simply wanted to know. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said: iʿqilhā wa tawakkal — tie your camel first, then make tawakkul upon Allah (swt). This is the concept, and not the other way around.

Loving Allah (swt), because maḥabbah, love, is the highest state — maḥabbatullāh is the highest gift Allah (swt) gives a person — and having full tawakkul in Allah (swt), does not excuse a person from fulfilling the actual conditions of tawakkul. A young man or a young woman is required, at a given age, to work; at a given age, to study; at a given age, to marry; and once married, to have children and raise a family. Saying "no, not now, maybe ten years from now, let me enjoy my youth first" and only then invoking tawakkul does not work that way. Allah (swt) gave a particular period of life for having children, and let the hormones and pheromones rage in the young for a reason. If there were no desire for the opposite sex until the age of eighty-five or ninety, and puberty only arrived then, old men and old women would be chasing after each other at that age, wanting to raise children — and who would look after a crying baby at that stage of life? There is ḥikmah, wisdom, in the law of Allah (swt): a marriageable age is given, and this is the fertile period, in which marriage should be entered into as soon as possible and children had as much as possible. Playing games with the law of Allah (swt) — taking the pill and other forms of contraception for years, and only after ten years wanting children, only to find that nothing happens — leaves no one to blame but the person who was not interested in the law of Allah (swt) beforehand, however much "tawakkul, inshāʾAllāh, we are trying everything now" is said afterwards.

Tawakkul is applying the unchanging laws of Allah (swt) first, and only then putting one's trust in Him: whatever comes from Allah (swt) after that is taken as it comes, with full trust that whatever is decided after tawakkul has been made and every condition fulfilled is the best outcome — whether or not it is understood, whether or not it is accepted, because that is irrelevant to the law of Allah (swt). A person does not choose his own spouse; Allah did that. A person does not choose his own children; Allah did that. But where a person fails to fulfil the obligations Islam places on the raising of children — giving them tarbiyah, upbringing in Islam — and neglects this, and twenty years later the child has set his mind on a non-Muslim, non-Islamic life, asking afterward "what did I do wrong" does not undo the failure to apply the law of Allah (swt) from the very beginning: choosing the right mother for one's child, choosing a muttaqī spouse, and then fulfilling whatever rights and obligations Islam places on that relationship without playing games with Allah (swt) or with the dīn. Only after that can it truly be said: yā Rabbī, I did my best, but this child turned out to be something completely different — one child, by Allah's grace, an angel; another, such that even shayṭān feels ashamed of him — I taught them exactly the same thing, I showed them exactly the same example, I did my best. That is a different matter altogether.

If Allah (swt) does not give what is wanted after every requirement has genuinely been fulfilled — through physical means, through duʿāʾ, through making wasīlah, everything spiritually, mentally, intellectually and physically possible — and still nothing happens, then it is left to Allah (swt); this is His law. A person needs to knock on the doors of the asbāb, the causes, the means — knock, knock, knock — and whether the door opens or does not open, Allah (swt) is the one who opens it or does not, because everyone is bound by His measure and His decree.