True Love in Islam

(Shaykh Kamaluddin Ahmed)

True love in Islam

Allah sent down Quran, deen of Islam, Muhammad s.a.w, to teach us how to feel, and where we should direct these feelings. Allah has given everyone the feeling of love. Any and every form of misguidance trying to counter the guidance of Allah, every one of them also followed the same path, that rather than us learning from Allah, Quran, deen and Nabi s.a.w, the misguided force wants to teach us how to feel and what to feel and who to feel it for. You can call it fashion, media or society, but all of it is trying to be a rival to Allah in deen. The strongest feeling is love, and they also know that. In our deen Allah ultimately wants to teach us how, when, what, who to love, they also want to teach us. It's a direct opposite to deen. This is what we simply call, there is true love and there is false love. The problem is if it was so easy, if we could finish the discussion there, that all Muslims are on true love and others are on false love. But it's not like that. So many believers have so many kinds of false love in their heart. This is not just for youth. We have cases in front of us in their teens, twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, and one case came to me even in his seventies. Caught up in false, haram love. There's one thing in common in all of them: every single one of them, as soon as they made the decision to go for false love, they immediately lost the sweetness of true love. It doesn't matter whether they were in this country or that country, or how old they were, they lost the sweetness of their faith (iman).  

This is a topic we need to understand. Let me tell you something from my heart, truly. There are people sitting in this masjid who are guilty of this disease and others who are not guilty. I want to make you scared. You should feel that I am not guilty "yet". When people tell me stories, I thank Allah that I have been saved from this and supplicate that I be protected from it. We should know if we have any dignity, honour and grace, it is because Allah kept us in His protection. This is a day when so many people in this world are calling people towards false love. It's a rival love to true love with Allah. We should also repent on this day, from false love.  

What is false love?

Qalb, heart is where you feel true love. What are the objects of that love?

Fake love: two things, either creation (non mahram), or wealth and this world. Everything out there is trying to pull everyone in here in that direction. Sometimes people don't even realise how they are affected by it.

It's happening on all levels, in all types of institutions, in every community, no matter how many Muslims live in that community.

This is what Allah did with the hypocrites: He hid their hypocrisy so well that the companions didn't know who they were. This meant that Allah will punish them most intensely. We should be scared that if Allah has hidden any sin of mine as perfectly as Allah has hidden the hypocrisy of the hypocrites. If they had hypocrisy in faith, we have hypocrisy in deeds.

This is the sin that we have to make the strongest repentance from.