My Success Is Only From Allah

Number three: wa mā tawfīqī illā billāh. My success and my guidance depend on Allah. Whenever we change something to good, whenever we do good, it is coming from Allah (swt). The tawfīq comes from Allah. The issue — the concept of tawfīq — is a little bit similar to barakah. It's a little bit similar.

I'll give you an example. You have a student who has exams in the month of Ramaḍān — two students; they have exams in the month of Ramaḍān. One of them says: I have to study day and night for this exam, so I'm going to leave tarāwīḥ; I'm going to leave the masjid; I just can't do it. I mean, I have to just forget about everything else. I don't have time for the dhikr of Allah. So this person goes and studies day and night. And these two students are engineering students, for example.

The other student — he wants to study; he wants to study very hard. But because he has so much love of Allah (swt) in his heart, he wants to go to the masjid, he wants to attend the ṣalāh, he wants to pray the tarāwīḥ, he wants to be with the Muslims, he wants to make dhikr. So his heart is leading him in that direction, so he's going in that direction, and he's studying much, much less than the other student. He's squeezing in a few hours in the day, but the rest of his time is going for the ʿibādah of Allah (swt), because it's the blessed month of Ramaḍān.

Both of them are studying a certain problem — in calculus, or in materials, or in physics, or hydrology, or anything in engineering, electronics, anything: a subject that has problems. And they're both studying this problem at the same time. So this student, who is keeping the orders of Allah (swt), and Allah wants to give him tawfīq — he's solving that problem, and he goes through the problem; it takes him half an hour to solve. Then he's done with the problem, and he goes to the next one.

The other student starts solving that problem, and he gets stuck somewhere in the problem. Sometimes in a problem, in the middle of the problem, there's something that you don't turn your attention to, and you get stuck in that problem, and you spend hours and hours and hours, and you're not able to get out of that loop. So that student got stuck in the problem, and he's going around in circles for hours and hours and hours. And the other one finished the problem, and he's praying tarāwīḥ in the masjid, and he's making dhikr of Allah (swt) in iʿtikāf that night.

Why did one of them have tawfīq, and the other one didn't? One of them has tawfīq — this concept of tawfīq — and the other one doesn't. Tawfīq is from Allah. It's not on how much you studied, or how much you worked. These are asbāb, it's true: that in general, the more you work, the more you get. That's a general rule, and it's the sunnah of Allah (swt). But there is also something else. There is another rule, and that is the rule of tawfīq.

We need to understand that Allah has laws. Allah has established laws in this world: the harder you work, the more fruits you would get. And there is also another law that says that if you have the tawfīq of Allah (swt), Allah will make things easy on you. And these laws work together. But we have to understand that both laws exist. So Shuʿayb is saying: wa mā tawfīqī illā billāh. My tawfīq is coming from Allah.