saying: Bishr ibn ʿUmāra narrated to me, saying: Abū Rawq narrated to us, from al-Ḍaḥḥāk, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbbās: "(And You alone we ask for help)," he said: You alone we ask for help in obeying You and in all our affairs. (1)

If someone were to say: What is the meaning of God's command to His servants to ask Him for help in obeying Him? Is it permissible, when He has commanded them to obey Him, that He does not help them in it? Or does anyone say to his Lord, "You alone we ask for help in obeying You," unless he is already helped in saying so, which itself is obedience? So what is the purpose of the servant asking his Lord for what He has already given him?

It is said: The interpretation of that is not as you have thought. Rather, the believer who supplicates his Lord to help him in obeying Him is asking Him to help him in what remains of his life regarding the obedience He has required of him, not regarding his good deeds that have already passed and elapsed in his past life. It was permissible for the servant to ask his Lord for that because God's granting that to His servant—while enabling his faculties to perform the obedience He required of him and the obligations He imposed upon him—is a favor from Him, majestic is His praise, which He bestowed upon him, and a grace from Him that He extended to him. There is neither flaw in governance nor injustice in judgment in His withholding favor from some of His servants by not granting them success—while the servant is occupied with disobeying Him and turning away from His love—nor in His bestowing His favor upon some of them when the servant strives himself in His love and hastens to His obedience. Thus, an ignorant person might fail to understand the wisdom of God's judgment in commanding His servant to ask Him for help in obeying Him. (2)

And in God's command—majestic is His praise—to His servants to say: "(You alone we worship and You alone we ask for help)," in the sense of asking Him for help in worship, is the clearest proof of the invalidity of the doctrine of those among the Qadarites (3) who affirm delegation (tafwīḍ), who held it impossible for God to command any of His servants with an order or obligate him