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One of the most fundamental pillars for Muslims is the concept of Tawwakul, which is often defined as trust and reliance in Allah. However, many people misunderstand the concept of Tawwakul. They see Tawwakul as a passive, verbal characteristic which simply involves supplicating to Allah for what we want. However, there’s an incident from Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) life that shows a clear perspective on Tawwakul. This is a short hadith, but it carries an important lesson for us. If you have any kind of animal, you always tie it down so that it doesn’t run off when you’re gone. However, in this hadith, the man wasn’t tying down his camel before leaving it. When Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) asked the man why he didn’t do it, the man explained that he was trusting Allah to keep his animal from running off. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) replied the man to first tie his camel down and then put his trust in Allah. From Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) response, it’s obvious that this man didn’t understand what trusting Allah was.The Prophet’s (PBUH) advice that demonstrating trust in Allah (Tawwakul) isn’t just a verbal and passive trait. Instead, Tawwakul is an active trait, meaning that we show Allah our trust by taking action toward what we are trying to accomplish. In other words, we must do our part first with our actions before trusting that Allah’s Divine help will come. To demonstrate true Tawwakul, we have to do our part first. For example, even though we believe Allah is the Giver of Life (Al-Muhyi) and The Protector/Preserver/Guardian (Al-Hafiz), we have to take the necessary health precautions to keep ourselves from falling sick, such as washing our hands and exercising. We also believe Allah is The Provider (Ar-Razzaq), but we still have to go out and put forth the effort to create income. We don’t expect money to just fall from the sky.