Taking precautions

[Karimeldib]

4-71 (O ye who believe! take your precautions.)
Allah commands us to take our precautions. Our ummah will not defeat its enemies without combat. Previous nations defeated their enemies with things such as winds, earthquakes, and the splitting of the sea for Moses peace be upon him, but our nation has to fight, and then Allah will aid us. A clear example of this is in the battle of Badr, Allah could have destroyed Quraysh with a simple command, but no the Muslims had to stand up and fight and only then did Allah say: 8-9 ("I will assist you with a thousand of the angels, ranks on ranks.")
8-60 (Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies, of Allah and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom Allah doth know.)
This strength that Allah orders us to prepare to the utmost of our power is two types; spiritual, and physical.
Building our spiritual strength is by holding on to our religion, and conforming to the path that Allah and his Messenger peace be upon him have shown us. The importance of this is clear in the story of the battle of Hunain; 9-25 (Assuredly Allah did help you in many battle-fields and on the day of Hunain: behold! your great numbers elated you, but they availed you naught: the land, for all that it is wide, did constrain you, and ye turned back in retreat.) When the companions, may Allah be pleased with them, relied on their numbers and power Allah left them on their own so they turned away from the battle in retreat. When the Prophet peace be upon him saw this called told is uncle Abbas may Allah be pleased with him to call out to the people and to remind them of all the times that Allah had made them victorious and to remind them of the real source of strength. Upon hearing these words the companions realized what they had done wrong and they quickly returned to their ranks then 9-26 (Allah did pour His calm on the Messenger and on the Believers, and sent down forces which ye saw not: He punished the Unbelievers: thus doth He reward those without Faith.)
The second type of preparation that Allah commands us to do is physical preparation. This is just as important as the spiritual preparation.
There are three types of people; re-activists, pro-activists, and strategic planners. The problem with the Muslim ummah now is that we are mostly re-activists. They bomb Iraq we hold strikes, we watch our brothers and sisters dying we cry. This is not what Allah has commanded us to do. On the contrary, Allah ordered us to prepare ourselves before things happen. We must become pro-active, we must try to initiate and work on things before something bad happens and then we start thinking about what we should do.
The Prophet tells us that Allah loves it when someone does a job to do it well. This job could be your school, work, prayer, or even dealing with other people. We need to return to the days when people from all over the world would travel to Muslim countries to get their education.
Being pro-active could not be the goal of the Muslim, our goal should be to become strategic planners. Strategic planners are those people who think about the future; plan it, set goals, and set up groups of people to achieve these goals. On the spiritual level we must all be at this level, we must think about the Day of Judgment and where we want to be on that day. We must prepare ourselves for this great day; we all know that it is coming. The re-activists will wait until it arrives, and by then it will be too late, the pro-activists will prepare themselves for this day, while the strategic planners will prepare themselves and the whole ummah for this day.
We must start to move from reactive to proactive people in both our spiritual and physical preparations if this ummah will ever return to its past glory.