Enslaved by love
“Love can make a freed man a slave, shacked and bound.
Love can make an intelligent man appear as a fool, irrational and reckless.”
When true love (Ishq) takes hold of a person, the lover becomes blind and deaf to the world except to his beloved to such an extent, even the deficiencies of his beloved become mere idiosyncratic qualities which he finds dear. The lover devotes himself to the beloved even if it results in the exclusion from everything else besides (the beloved). When a person loves someone, he is constantly recollecting and remembering the memory of his beloved. Her beauty and his love for her renders him weak and unable to resist her, thoughts of her invade his mind, and his longing for her envelopes his heart. And yet, the love gives him purpose, it gives him strength to forgo what he loves for what his beloved loves, and at the same time prevents him from doing anything that will cause displeasure to his beloved – so he may gain her love. As a poet once said:
“The lover is blind and deaf, yet he only sees his beloved,
he is present even when he is absent,
he is near even when he is far away,
he is disobedient in the obedience of his beloved.”
Love is a powerful force, perhaps, the most prevailing force in the universe. When it takes hold – it takes hold of the entire person. And when it abandons, it leaves a person shipwrecked. This annihilation of the lover in beloved – whereby he loses himself in his beloved is all too easy for his exploitation. Surely, no created entity who is bound by imperfections is worthy of this kind of love, blind obedience and devotion. This love is something that should be only reserved for Allah, for He is perfection – and thereby the only One worthy of it.
“Allah made ‘Ishq’ (love) in the world – this worldly love, He made it to show us what Divine love is like.” [Shaykh Hamza Yusuf]
Enslaved by Allah
“You do not love anything without being its slave, but He does not want you to be someone else’s slave.” [Hikam|210]
Allah desires of you that you desire Him above everything other than Him. He prefers for you that you prefer Him above everything other than Him. He wants to be content with you, by you being content with Him. He does not want to share you with anything else even though He owns you and creation. He created you for Him to manifest His Love, Grace and Mercy upon you.
He made you with just the one heart, so that your being can be centred on only one thing at any given moment. He reminded you: “Allah has not made for any man two hearts within his body”[Al-Ahzab:33:4]. Therefore, when you contemplate Him, you cannot contemplate anything other than Him. When you love Him, you cannot love anything other than Him except that love emanates from Him and for His sake. You are a slave of whatever you love, and He only wants you to become enslaved to Him. His love for you is to have the very best – Himself. Ata’illah beautifully captured this when he said: “You do not love anything without being its slave, but He does not want you to be someone else’s slave.” [Hikam|210]
Love’s conditions
The conditions of love are to be present and be in the service of the beloved. It requires knowledge on your part; to be familiarised with what your beloved wants from you. It requires sacrifice on your part of what you desire in order to seek the pleasure of what your beloved desires. It requires your sacrifices to become what you desire and love to do. So you need to know Allah, then what Allah is asking you to do and what He is asking you to refrain from, then engaging in these to draw His love.
“My servant draws not near to Me with anything more loved by Me than the obligation I have enjoined upon him, and My servant continues to draw near to Me with optional extra works so that I shall love him.” [Bukhari]
One thing you should note from the Hadith cited above is that you have to make the first move – you have to seek Him, find what He wants from you draw closer to Him by what He ordained. And when you do, He will draw nearer to you faster than you can ever draw close to Him. Allah has outlined a simple formula of love in the Qur’an: “Say [o Prophet]:
“If you love Allah, then follow me [Prophet Muhammad]; Allah will love you and forgive you your sins. Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.” [Al-Imran: 3: 31]
Our Lord, increase our love for You and for our beloved Messenger (ﷺ), grant us the Taufiq to follow in his (ﷺ) footsteps. Our Lord, grant us Your love – the love which makes our obligations feel effortless and becomes the pleasure of our eyes, and grants us the strength to refrain from everything You have prohibited.
