“There are thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth.” Rumi
THE concept of love in Islamic mystical theology has several distinct characteristics.
First, love predominantly portrayed appears to be conditional in nature.
According to one theologian, Allah says, ‘that a man seeks to draw near to Him through supererogatory acts of obedience, so that He will love him.’
Thus, it is clear that Allah’s love comes after the person’s performance of deeds that call forth His love.
Allah can freely give this love to those human beings conditional upon their obedience to His revealed will.
A significant number of Quran references confirm this point and portray Allah as exclusively loving a specific kind of human beings.
For example, the Quran states that God only loves, “If mankind follows the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) trusts in Him and does good.”
Obedience appears to make human beings worthy of love, while the reciprocity of mankind’s action and God’s reaction is emphasized.
Some other scholars argue that God’s love is conditional, given only to those, who deserve it.
Quran states that Allah only loves the patient (3:146), those who repent and purify themselves (2:222), those who are just (60:8), who do good (2:195), who are God conscious (3:76), who follow the Prophet (3:31), who rely upon Allah (3:159), who are humble, grateful, faithful and remember Allah often.
Quran states that Allah does not love the ungrateful sinner (2:276), those who spread corruption (5:64), the transgressors (2:190), the oppressors (3:140), the treacherous sinners (4:107), those who are proud and boastful (4:36), the arrogant (16:23), the extravagant((7:31).
Although at first the evidence may suggest that God’s love is conditional upon certain kind of persons, Quran tells us, “Allah does not say, My mercy (Ar-Rahman) encompasses only the faithful.”
If Allah’s mercy encompasses everything than it must encompass with love and compassion even the ungrateful sinners, oppressors, and arrogant tyrants.
However, it is important to note that that justice and accountability still exist.
The difference is that those that live a life in opposition to what God has dictated become veiled and unable to receive God’s unconditional love.
When we sin, we veil ourselves from receiving God’s love, grace and mercy, which in turn can begin to harden our hearts.
Just as a soil requires a constant influx of water to remain fertile, we need to constantly keep seeking Allah’s love through repentance, good deeds and worship in order for our hearts to soften and surrender enough to blossom.
Quran calls sin a self-destructive process.
Quran says, when we sin we destroy ourselves and by destroying ourselves, we forfeit the chance to experience that beauty, which is there for us in this life and the next.
Like if we have some shortcomings in the womb, we suffer from the physical ailments.
Similarly, if we do not develop these qualities, we will forfeit our relationship with God and the very purpose of our Being and it will be the worse hell, we can possibly imagine.
Quran when it talks of heaven and hell uses very powerful symbolic language.
The greatest peace and serenity can be offered to you in heaven on one end and on the other, the most terrible sufferings.
It would be worse than anything that you could ever imagine.
Quran tells us God will say on the Day of Judgment, “I did not harm you in the least, you destroyed yourself and it can be said in total objective truth.”
Relationship with God.
Dr Jaffery Lang says, “If the purpose of life is to develop a relationship with God, to come closer to Him, we need to have something common.
To get closer to another human being, one has to develop a commonality of interests, share feelings and similar type of experiences.
Then how does one get closer to God, what do we share with Him?
We share with Him what Quran tells us that God gave us, when we came into this world; He breathed into us something of His spirit, a sea of qualities within us and we could either kill them, stunt them, or cause them to grow.
When we grow in these, we grow not only in our ability to experience the beauty of life through these, but we grow in our ability to receive and experience the infinite beauty, the infinite peace, the infinite truth, the infinite compassion, the infinite mercy and all that which only comes from the infinite perfect source of all these.
The more we grow in mercy, the more we grow in our ability to receive and experience in this life and in the next, the infinite mercy of God.
The more we grow in compassion, the more we grow in our ability to experience God’s compassion in this life through prayer, and through ritual and contemplation.
The more we grow in truthfulness, the more we grow in our ability to experience the God’s truth, because all truth comes from God.
The more we grow in these things, the more we experience the attributes of perfection and experience His being, trying to merge our nature unto His, getting closer to Him.
This is more than physical nearness, more than just convergence of ideas, feelings; it is the convergence of Essential Beings, a closet type of nearness, two beings can feel or experience.”
Rumi says, “Knock and He‘ll open the door.
Vanish and He’ll make you shine like a sun.
Fall and He’ll raise you to the heaven, become nothing and He will turn you into everything.”
All we need is to empty our self of our ego for the breath of life to flow through us, making us a unique instrument of God’s will in the symphony of His all encompassing love and mercy.
—To be continued.
—The writer is author of various books based in Rawalpindi. (muhammadtahir50@hotmail.com)
