Ibn Ata'illah's Wisdom: Relying On Allah, Not Our Own Actions

Ibn Aṭāʾillāh al-Iskandarī and the Wisdom of Reliance

My dear brothers and sisters in Islam, Peace be upon you. Ibn Aṭāʾillāh al-Iskandarī, may Allah have mercy on him, has a very famous book that we have mentioned before — Al-Ḥikam al-ʿAṭāʾiyyah, the Statements of Wisdom of Ibn Aṭāʾillāh al-Iskandarī, may Allah have mercy on him. These statements are known for the profound truths and the deep understanding of the deen and the subtleties of the relationship with Allah that he conveys in a very, very eloquent manner. Many commentaries have been written throughout the centuries explaining the realities of these statements and the beautiful lessons that we can learn.

With the tawfīq of Allah, if we can cover a few of them inshāʾAllāh, this may serve to be a means of our guidance and strengthening our relationship with Allah. One of his statements that I would like to share — he says:

(Al-Ḥikam al-ʿAṭāʾiyyah, Ibn Aṭāʾillāh al-Iskandarī)

So there is a lot going on in these few words. The translation is: One of the indications that a person is having full iʿtimād — trust — on his own actions, is that when he ends up losing hope at a time when he falters and he makes a mistake.

Now that is just a translation which for many of us may still be confusing — what exactly is he trying to say? So let us go back and try to examine the words one by one.

What is Iʿtimād on One's Actions?

مِنْ عَلَامَاتِ الاعْتِمَادِ — one of the indications that a person has reliance, اعْتِمَادٌ عَلَى الْعَمَلِ, on his actions. He is talking about having iʿtimād and reliance on one's own actions. Is that something desirable or undesirable? Is that something we should have or should not have?

The answer to that obviously is that a person who is traveling towards Allah, the sālik ilallāh, the one who is desiring the riḍwān and pleasure of Allah — as a slave of Allah, our iʿtimād and our reliance is supposed to be on none other than Allah. We are not supposed to have reliance on anyone besides Allah. This is one of the meanings of tawḥīd.

The meanings of tawḥīd is that when you say لَا إِلٰهَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ — that there is no one worthy of worship besides Allah — it means:

• لَا مَعْبُودَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ — No one worthy of worship.
• لَا مَسْجُودَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ — No one that we prostrate to besides Allah.
• لَا مَقْصُودَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ — There is no ultimate objective that we are striving to reach besides Allah.
• There is no one that we fear besides Allah.
• There is no one that we have hope in besides Allah.
• There is no one that we trust in and have iʿtimād in besides Allah.

And when we have iʿtimād and trust in Allah, the unique word for that trust is known as tawakkul. Iʿtimād is trust — and trust could be on human beings as well. But the full meaning of trust, 100% reliance — then the term for that is tawakkul.

And Allah teaches us in the Quran that we should say:

The believers — it is only upon Allah that they lay their trust. Allah says this in so many different āyāt.

The Last Āyah of Sūrah al-Tawbah

Another āyah where this concept is mentioned is the last āyah of Sūrah al-Tawbah:

"Indeed there has come a messenger to you from amongst yourselves. It is very, very difficult for him to see you undergoing any pain because he loves you — like a mother cannot see the pain of her child, or a father for that matter; parents cannot see their children having sickness or pain. He is desiring khair and goodness for you. With the believers he is loving and merciful." Who is this? Muḥammad ﷺ. "Despite all of the above, if they still turn their backs on you, then you should say: Allah alone is sufficient for me."

The order of the words is significant. تَوَكَّلْتُ عَلَيْهِ means "I rely on Him." But عَلَيْهِ تَوَكَّلْتُ — if you switch it around — means "only on Him I rely." Only on Him I rely. "And He is the Lord of the Great Throne."

No One Enters Paradise by Their Own Actions

There was one interfaith meeting I happened to be present at, and the Christian priest presented and he said: "Unlike our other colleagues here, in their religion they trust in their actions. We have a very humble approach in front of God — that we do not feel that we can enter Heaven based on our actions. Rather, we enter Heaven by believing in our Savior." نَعُوذُ بِاللَّهِ — "God sent His only begotten Son نَعُوذُ بِاللَّهِ سُبْحَانَهُ وَأَن يَكُونَ لَهُ وَلَدٌ to the world. And whoever believes that Jesus is his Savior then he will enter Paradise — not based on your own good deeds, but rather by believing in the Savior."

So then I had an opportunity to respond and I said: نَعُوذُ بِاللَّهِ — we also have a Savior. It's not that you have a Savior in Jesus and we don't have a Savior and we are so arrogant that we trust in our deeds that we can enter Paradise based on our own good deeds. We definitely need a Savior too and we believe in a Savior. And our Savior is none other than Allah. We are looking forward to the faḍl of Allah to save us.

And in fact we have an explicit narration of our Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ, teaching us, instructing us, that no one will enter Paradise based on their actions. He said:

(Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Hadith 5673; Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Hadith 2816)

No one will enter Jannah based on his actions. And he didn't just stop there. May Allah reward the Ṣaḥābah — they had a follow-up question. They said:

"Not even you, O Messenger of Allah?" He said:

(Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Hadith 5673; Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Hadith 2816)

"No — I cannot enter Jannah either, until I am completely enshrouded, covered, immersed by Allah in His Mercy and His faḍl."

So, does that mean we sit back and say the faḍl of Allah will take us? Absolutely not. The reason we do the actions and we do the aʿmāl is so that hopefully, even if one ʿamal is worthy of acceptance in the court of Allah, then inshāʾAllāh we can become deserving of that faḍl of Allah. We never truly deserve anything — we just want to inshāʾAllāh gain that pleasure of Allah, gain the riḍā of Allah, that Allah overlooks all our mistakes and all our deficiencies and then grants us Jannah through His faḍl. No one is entering Jannah based on their own actions — it is through the faḍl of Allah.

So we're not supposed to have iʿtimād and reliance on our actions — as if to say, "Wow, I'm going to enter Jannah for sure because I'm doing so many great things." Absolutely not. Rather, we do the actions and after doing the aʿmāl pleasing to Allah, then our condition should be:

Fearing rejection and hoping for acceptance — and asking Allah to grant qabūliyyah.

The Sign of Relying on Actions: Losing Hope When You Fall

Going back to what Ibn Aṭāʾillāh al-Iskandarī, raḥmatullāh ʿalayh, is saying: he says مِنْ عَلَامَةِ الاعْتِمَادِ عَلَى الْعَمَلِ — one of the signs that a person is making this mistake and is relying fully on his own actions instead of relying on Allah. He's not saying this is a good or bad thing in that sentence — rather, he says: the fact that a person has this sickness of relying on his actions, I am identifying for you one of the signs that you can determine you have this sickness. What is that sign?

نُقْصَانُ الرَّجَاءِ عِنْدَ وُجُودِ الزَّلَلِ — that when a person falters, stumbles, falls, makes a mistake — when he's not able to continue with that ʿamal or there is some deficiency in his ʿamal — and at that time, he completely becomes despondent and loses hope, and he says: "That's it. No way Allah is going to forgive me now. No way I can enter Jannah now. Look what happened — I made this mistake." And he loses hope.

When he loses complete hope in the forgiveness of Allah, then this is a sign that there was a problem from the very beginning. And the problem from the beginning was that the entire time he was trusting in his own actions. He had full iʿtimād that he's going to enter Jannah based on his actions. And now since there was a problem in his action, he lost that hope.

Yāʾs — Losing Hope in Allah: A Trait of the Disbelievers

As human beings, we will stumble and we will fall. And sometimes we will fall flat on our face. These are opportunities where Shayṭān injects himself into our mind and our heart and creates within us one of the ṣifāt of the kuffār. That attribute — that Allah mentions in the Quran — is called yāʾs. And yāʾs means a person completely loses hope in Allah. This is the ṣifah of the kuffār. Because Allah says in the Quran:

The context of this āyah is Sūrah Yūsuf, when for the fourth time, Yaʿqūb ʿalayhis-salām is telling his sons: تَحَسَّسُوا مِن يُوسُفَ — now also وَأَخِيهِ — go and try to find Yūsuf ʿalayhis-salām and find his brother Binyāmīn. "Do not lose hope in the mercy of Allah" — the blind father is saying, after decades of crying — "because only the kāfirūn are those who lose hope in the mercy of Allah."

Every Son of Adam Is a Sinner — The Best Are Those Who Repent

The question is not if we make a mistake — rather the question is: when we make the mistakes, which we are bound to make. Rasūlullāh ﷺ made a flat statement and he said:

(Sunan al-Tirmidhī, Hadith 2499; Sunan Ibn Mājah, Hadith 4251)

Every son of Adam is a sinner — every son of Adam by default is a sinner. And the best of the sinners are those who repent from their sins.

Allah does not say وَإِن فَعَلُوا فَاحِشَةً — "if they commit a sin." Rather Allah says:

Allah says "when" they commit a sin — the believers, the good ones — they are bound to make sins. وَإِذَا فَعَلُوا — when they commit the sin, فَاحِشَةً أَوْ ظَلَمُوا أَنفُسَهُمْ — where they commit a great wrong upon themselves. By disobeying Allah you're not doing ẓulm on anyone else besides yourself. Then what do the good believers do? They remember Allah. They seek forgiveness from Allah over their sins. "And who else will forgive their sins besides Allah?" And they do not persist in that sin while they remember Allah.

So, when we make the mistake — when there is wujūdul-zalalal, when the stumbling happens — then we should not have nuqṣān of rajāʾ and lose hope in the mercy of Allah. Rather we need to continue to believe that Allah is there and Allah will forgive us.

Despair: A Door to Apostasy

If this yāʾs becomes so much that a person says, "No point seeking forgiveness — game over, I'm already doomed and damned anyway," then he has become a victim of Shayṭān. This is one of the insinuations of Shayṭān. This is the talbīs of Iblīs.

And one of the major causes of riddah and apostasy amongst the youth is this very same problem. There is the fitnah of shubuhāt — intellectual doubts — and shahawāt — following the nafs, the sins of the flesh. You would imagine that people become atheists because of shubuhāt, intellectual academic discussions and doubts. But that is actually a small minority of the riddah cases. A small minority — because people are not that intellectually inclined to even understand the objections of the atheists and the philosophers, such that they have to worry about not finding the answer and then become murtadd.

The majority of those who are becoming murtadd is because of shahawāt — they make mistakes. They commit so many sins. And after they commit sins, they say: "What's the point? Allah is never going to forgive me." Or: "I'm going to hell anyway." Or they cannot continue to live with the inner conscience which is eating at them from inside — telling them: "You're doing this ḥarām, you're doing ḥarām, you're so bad." And then they want to get rid of that. And so instead of seeking forgiveness from Allah, they say: "Forget about it. Why am I feeling bad? Because I believe it's ḥarām. Why do I feel it's ḥarām? Because I'm a Muslim. So if I get rid of Islam, then I get rid of the guilty conscience, and then I can just be happy with my sin."

This is the path of Shayṭān that is taking them to leave the fold of Islam. So let us always emphasize the forgiveness of Allah, and let us emphasize how Allah knows that we are sinners, and He wants us to seek forgiveness from Him.

The Ḥadīth Qudsī: Allah Wants to Forgive

What could be more emphatic — more taʾkīd — than the words of Rasūlullāh ﷺ in a ḥadīth qudsī, where he says that Allah — subḥānAllāh — this is the final hadith we conclude with — that:

(Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Hadith 2749)

"If you would not commit sins and seek forgiveness from Me, then I would literally destroy you and bring another people who would commit sins and seek forgiveness from Me, so that I would have the opportunity to — forgive them."

I mean, what more can you say? How much is Allah giving us hope? Literally: if you don't commit sins and seek forgiveness from Me, you're not doing your job. I'll get rid of you, get someone else — because I want to forgive. This is what I love to do. I want to forgive you. And when you seek forgiveness from Me, then you are giving Me the opportunity to forgive you. That is how far Allah is going in expressing to us His desire to forgive us.

So never for a moment can we lose hope in His mercy. And whenever those thoughts come from Shayṭān, then we say:

Shayṭān, go away — my Rabb is Ghafūr wa Raḥīm. I have nowhere else to turn to besides Him.

There is nowhere to take refuge from the anger of Allah but to return back, seeking forgiveness from Allah.

وَآخِرُ دَعْوَانَا أَنِ الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ

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