LOVE
Allah The Almighty has said, “O believers! Whosoever among you apostatize from their religion, God will assuredly bring in their stead a people whom He will love and who will love Him.” (Qur’an: 5:59)
He has also said, “Some men take idols beside God and love them as they love God, but the believers love God best” (Qur’an: 2: 160)
God Loves His People
Hazrat Muhammad (SAW) has said, “I’ve heard Gabriel saying that God has said, “ Whoever despises any of My friends has declared war against Me. I do not hesitate in anything as I hesitate to seize the soul of My faithful servant who dislikes death and whom I wouldn’t say I like to hurt, but he cannot escape from there. No means whereby My servant seeks My favor is more pleasing to Me than the performance of the obligations which I have laid upon him, and My servant continuously seeks My favor by works of supererogation until I love him, and when I love him, I am his hearing and his sight and his hand and his helper.”
Hazrat Muhammad (SAW) has also said, “God loves to meet those who love to meet Him, and dislikes to meet those who dislike to meet Him.” When God loves a Man, He says to Gabriel, “O Gabriel, I Love such and such one, so do thou love him”; then Gabriel loves him and says to the dwellers in Heaven, “God loves such and such a one,” and they love him too; then he bestows favors on him in the earth, so that the inhabitants of the earth love him; and as it happens concerning Love, so does it happen regarding hate.”
Spiritual Meaning of Love: Mahabbat
Mahabbat (Love) is said to be derived from (hibbat), which are seeds that fall to the earth in the desert. The name (hubb) Love was given to such seeds (hibb), because Love is the source of life just as seeds are the origin of plants. As the change or severity of season does not corrupt seeds hidden in the earth but grow up to give life and beauty to the world, so does love; when it takes dwelling in the heart, it is not corrupted by presence or absence, by pleasure or pain, by separation or union.
Others say that Mahabbat is derived from hubb, meaning “a jar full of stagnant water,” because when Love is collected in the heart and fills it, there is no room there for any thought except for the beloved, as Shibli says, “Love is called Mahabbat because it obliterates (tamhu) from heart everything except the beloved.” Others say that Mahabbat is derived from hubb, meaning “the four conjoined pieces of wood on which a water-jug is placed because a lover lightly bears whatever his beloved metes to him – honor or disgrace, pain or pleasure, fair treatment or foul.” Some others say that Mahabbat is derived from habb, plural of habbat, meaning core of the heart where Love resides. In this case, Mahabbat is called by the name of its dwelling place. Others derive it from habab, “bubbles of water and the effervescence thereof in heavy rainfall.” Love is the effervescence of the heart longing for union with the beloved.
As the body subsists through the spirit, the heart subsists through Love, and Love subsists through the vision of and union of the beloved. Others again declare that hubb is the name applied to pure Love because Arabs call the pure white of the human eye habbat al insan, just as they call pure black (core) of the heart habbat al qalb: the latter is the seat of Love, the former of vision. Hence, the heart and eye are rivals in Love, as the poet says:
“My heart envies mine eye the pleasure of seeing, And my eye envies my heart the pleasure of meditating.”
Use of the term – LOVE – in a spiritual context
Love – Mahabbat is used by theologians in three significations:
• Restless desire for the object of Love and inclination and passion, mainly about created beings and their mutual affectation towards one another, cannot be applied to God.
• God’s beneficence and His conferment of special privileges on those He chooses and causes to attain the perfection of sainthood are peculiarly distinguished by diverse kinds of His miraculous grace.
• Praise is what God bestows on a man for good action.
God’s Love of a Man
It is reflected in His goodwill towards and mercy on him. Love is one of the names of His will (iradat), like “satisfaction,” “anger,” “mercy” etc. His will is an eternal attribute whereby He wills His actions.
Man’s Love for God
It is a quality that manifests itself in the heart of a pious believer, in the form of veneration and magnification, so that he seeks to satisfy his Beloved and becomes impatient and restless in his desire for the vision of Him and cannot rest with anyone except Him, and grows familiar with the remembrance (dhikr) of Him and abjures the remembrance of everything besides. The lovers of God are those people who devote themselves to death in nearness to him, not those who seek His nature (kayfiyyat).
Kinds of Love
There are two kinds:
• The Love of like towards like is a desire instigated by the lower soul and which seeks the essence of the beloved object through sex
• Love, unlike the object of its Love, seeks to become intimately attached to an attribute of that object, e.g., hearing without speech or seeing without an eye.
Believers who Love God
There are two kinds:
• Who regard the favor and benevolence of God towards them and are led by that regard to Love the benefactor;
• Those who are so enraptured by Love reckon all favors as a veil (between themselves and God) and, by regarding the benefactor, are led to (consciousness of) His favors. The latter way is the most exalted of the two.
Secret Doctrine of Divine Love
Sumnun al Muhibb holds a peculiar doctrine concerning Love. He has asserted that all “states” and “stations” are stages of Love and that every stage and abode, which the seeker may destroy, except the abode of Love, which is not destructible in any circumstances so long as the way remains in existence. Other shaykhs agree with him on this matter, and to keep the doctrine of Divine Love hidden, they have named it “purity” or (safawat), and the lover they called Sufi; they use the word “poverty” (faqr) to denote the renunciation of the lover’s will in His affirmation of the Beloved’s will, and they call the lover “poor” (faqir).
The Book of Love
Amr b. Uthman Makki says in the Kitab-i Mahabbat that God created souls (dilha) seven thousand years before the bodies and kept them in station of proximity (qurb), and that he created the spirits (janha) seven thousand years before souls and kept them in the degree of intimacy (uns), and that he created the hearts (sirrha) seven thousand years before the spirits and kept them in the degree of union (wasl), and revealed the epiphany of His beauty to the heart three hundred and sixty times every day and bestowed on it three hundred and sixty looks of grace. He has caused the spirits to hear the word of Love and manifested three hundred and sixty exquisite intimacy favors to the soul so that they all surveyed the phenomenal Universe, saw nothing more precious than themselves, and were filled with vanity and pride. Therefore, God subjected them to probation: He imprisoned the heart in the spirit and the spirit in the soul and the soul in the body; then mingled reason (aql) with them, and sent Prophets and gave them commands; then each of them began to search its unique station. God ordered them to pray. The body betook itself to prayer, the soul attained Love, and the heart found rest in union with Him. The explanation of Love is not Love because Love is a feeling (hal), and the feelings are never mere words (qal).
Ishq – Excessive Love
There is much controversy about it among Shaykhs. Some regard it as allowable towards God but do not proceed from God. They say such attributes are those of one who is debarred from his beloved, and Man is debarred from God; God is not debarred from Man. Hence, the terms “love” (Mahabbat) and “pure Love” (safawat) are correct. Moreover, according to them, excessive Love (`ishq) cannot possibly arise without actual vision; therefore, it cannot be felt towards God, who is not seen in this world.
Man’s Glory
Sumnun Muhibb has said, “The lovers of God have borne away the glory of this world and the next: Hazrat Muhammad (SAW) has said, “A Man is with the object of his Love.” Therefore, they are with God in both worlds, and those with God can do no wrong. The glory of this world is God’s being with them, and the glory of the next world is their being with God.
Yahya b. Muadh al Razi has said, “Real Love is neither diminished by unkindness nor increased by kindness and bounty,” In Love, both kindness and unkindness are causes, and the cause of a thing is reduced to nothing when the thing exists. A lover delights in the affliction that his beloved makes him suffer, and having Love, he regards kindness and unkindness with the same indifference.
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