I remember reading, before he became the star of the team, that he was a very good player but had a very bad temper. He would regularly fight with other players and swear, for instance.

Although he was a good player, his team went nowhere. But suddenly in the mid-1990s that changed, and the Rockets became a winning team instead of one with a couple of good players but no coordination. This culminated in their success in the 1994 and 1995 NBA championships.

Olajuwon used to be a non-practicing Muslim. I and a group of friends once asked him how the transformation to Islam affected his character.

"Before I started practicing my faith, I used to completely rely on myself. When I had done my best, I would be extremely frustrated if I didn't win. It would irritate and anger me. And that was causing me to be bad to others by fighting and swearing," he explained.

"But when I started practicing my faith, I learned that results are not my property. I started doing my best but then I left success and failure to my Creator. Now I was not irritated by failure and was not overinflated by success. That caused me to calm down and improve my behavior towards others on my team and we became a team."

The difference between Olajuwon before and after was his understanding of the concept of tawakkul, which is a major concept in the relationship of a believer with his or her Creator. When believers fully practice tawakkul by putting their full trust in Allah, they realize that they are not all-powerful, Allah is. Although Allah has given us all control over some variables, Allah ultimately controls all the other variables known or unknown to us.

Our capacities are limited. Allah's are unlimited. We are responsible for following His command by doing our duty and making the right choice in the world of choices and following it up with action. In this way, good intentions and directions combined with good steps are what we are responsible for. And as Muslims, we want to do our best in that area. But results, positive or negative, are not always in our control. They are dependent upon the laws and prophecies that Allah has put in place and on His Will.

Sometimes we think that something is good for us while actually it is bad for us. And sometimes we feel that something is bad for us while actually it is the other way around. So the limit of human knowledge explains the limits of not only our control, but our responsibility as well. That is why we do our part and leave the results to God.

The second consequence of tawakkul is that it invites us to connect to a powerful Ally Who is no one but the Lord Himself. The more we rely on Him, the greater the chances that we will try to please Him by following the guidance He has given us, which in turn will lead to goodness in this world and success in the hereafter.

The third consequence of tawakkul is what Olajuwon learned by observing himself. By fully trusting in Allah and relying on Him, we are not depressed by what we have lost and we are not intoxicated by our success (Al-Hadid 57:22–23). We know that all things are in Allah's hands, and that makes us not only humbler but more submissive to God, thus better believers.

Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) said, "Were you to put your complete trust and reliance on Allah, He would provide for you as He provides for the birds. They issue forth hungry in the morning and return filled in the evening" (At-Tirmidhi).