"God is love," the New Testament teaches, and Muslim theologians would respond, "But of course." The problem is that we are not God. As Jesus said, "Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God " (Mark 10:18). There is no authentic love but one, that is, God. This is tawhid, the assertion of divine unity that is the foundation of Islamic thought.

Religious discussions of love sometimes address how it descends from its divine status and intermingles with human affairs. In any case, everyone recognizes its attractive power, even if they disagree as to what it is and where it comes from. Rumi mentions the two extremes of disagreement in the verse,

For the elect, love is a tremendous eternal light, 


for the common people, love is form and appetite. (Divan 18197)

"The elect and the common people" is an expression used in all branches of Islamic learning to distinguish between the experts and the uninformed. For Rumi, the experts are the prophets and saints.

To think that love is "form and appetite" is to imagine that it derives from the realm of sense perception and biological processes. Rumi has nothing against form and appetite, but he sees the distinctiveness of human nature to lie in its openness to the tremendous eternal light.

"Eternal" (qadim) means unchanging. The word is contrasted with "newly arrived" (muhdath), which means dwelling under the sway of time and alteration. God is eternal, and everything other than God -- the universe and all it contains -- fades away. We change, the eternal light stays the same. We have the appearance of reality, but every appearance disappears.

The Quran says that God is "the light of the heavens and the earth" (24:35). The heavens are the high realms of spiritual beings (such as angels and souls), and the earth is the low realm of bodily things. Nothing appears without light. The more intense the light, however, the more difficult it is to see, which explains why the spiritual realm is invisible. No one can imagine the upper limit of physical light, much less that of nonphysical light, which is the consciousness that animates the heavens and the earth.

Spiritual traditions speak of ascending levels of nonphysical illumination, beginning with the obscure sparkles that typify everyday awareness and culminating in the infinite light of the eternal Self. In the Quran's retelling of the story of Moses and the Burning Bush, the light said, "I indeed am God; there is no god but I" (20:14): There is no god but God's very Self, the light of the heavens and the earth.

Rumi's verse, in short, refers to the axiom of tawhid, the fact that there is no true light but the divine light and no true love but the divine love. Everything in heaven and earth is the reverberation of the loving light. Each thing arrives newly and departs just as quickly. In relation to the universe, God is like the moon in relation to flowing water. As Rumi puts it,

The creatures are like water, limpid and pure, 


shining therein the attributes of the majestic God...

Ages have passed, and this is a new age.


The moon is the same, but the water is not. 


(Mathnawi 6: 3172, 3175)

Our scientific worldview is rooted in the measurable, but love and God are immeasurable. Scientific theories that speak of love naturally tend to agree with Rumi's common people: Love is form and appetite, feeling and emotion, impulses in the brain -- all these can be measured. The Quranic and Biblical worldviews see love as none other than the only reality that truly is. The word "reality," of course, fails to stir the heart, and "love" calls for commitment. Those who answer the call can transform themselves and the world.

Among the many mentions of love in the Quran, the favorite verse of love-theorists is this: "He loves them, and they love Him" (5:54). This verse puts the Islamic worldview in a nutshell: God brought the universe into existence because of his love for human beings. Human beings fulfill their calling by loving God.

The radiance of love's eternal light gives rise to the universe. The goal of love is to overcome separation, to bridge gaps, to bring the two lovers together as one. If love is to do its work, people must recognize the light and love it in return.

"He loves them" brought them into existence. Their recognition of the light feeds "They love Him." Once love intervenes, form and appetite lose their luster.

The final goal of lovers is to join the shining light at its source. The power that works this transformation is love. One of the many Quranic names of God is "friend" (wali), an Arabic word that combines the senses of "lover" and "helper." Both meanings can be seen in the verse, "God is the friend of those who have faith. He brings them out of the darkness into the light" (2:257). 

Source: William C. Chittick Ph.D for The Huffington Post.  Dr Chittick is Professor of Religious Studies, State University of New York, Stony Brook.

 

In July 2006, I was watching the news report on Israel's devastating attack on Lebanon. As I saw the images of severed bodies and heard the cries for help, the frustration and helplessness I felt was overwhelming. So I decided to pray while reciting from the mus'haf (hardcopy of the Qur'an, which is the word of God). As I was reading, I arrived at the verse:

 

"Or do you think that you will enter Paradise while such [trial] has not yet come to you as came to those who passed on before you? They were touched by poverty and hardship and were shaken until [even their] messenger and those who believed with him said, 'When is the help of Allah?' Unquestionably, the help of Allah is near." [Qur'an, 2:214]

 

And that was the answer. As human beings, we will be tested. But this doesn't mean that we are going to live our lives in perpetual hardship, because 'unquestionably, the help of Allah is near.' So what does it mean when we are going through hardship? Is Allah  (exalted is He) angry with us? What if there is no way out?

Whenever we go through hardship, there are things we need to know with certainty. Allah  tells us in the Qur'an:

 

"[...] Allah will bring about, after hardship, ease." [Qur'an, 65:7]

 

Certain hardships are so consuming that we cannot focus on anything but the difficulty. But we have to remember that if we were to enumerate the blessings of Allah , we would not be able to count them. Reminding ourselves of the other blessings in our lives helps us to see the test within the context of the grand scheme of things. Just the fact that you can make sajda (prostration), and call out, "O Allah!" is a blessing that surpasses all others.

But why?

There is a purpose behind the trial, and this purpose corresponds to our internal state and our relationship with Allah . Allah  has 99 Beautiful Names, and it should suffice us to know that He is the Most Merciful, the Most Just and the Most Wise. Your test is not being put upon you by a random being, but by the Almighty Allah, who is closer to us than our jugular vein.

Tests are a way to purify us. The Prophet  said, "No fatigue, nor disease, nor sorrow, nor sadness, nor hurt, nor distress befalls a Muslim, even if it were the prick he receives from a thorn, but that Allah expiates some of his sins for that," [Bukhari]. Our ultimate aim is to earn Allah's pleasure and Jannah (paradise), and all of us fall short in truly worshiping Allah  as He should be worshiped. Many of us fail to ask for forgiveness regularly, or to reflect on our state and return to Allah . These tests, as burdensome as they are, ease our burden on the Day of Judgment, if we respond with patience.

Trials also have a way of reminding us of our purpose. If we are far from Allah , the test is usually to bring us close to Him. Whatever heedlessness we are engaging in, the test should make us realize we have no one, no one at all, but Him.

Sheikh Ratib an-Nabulsi related a story about a man in Syria. This man would always mock Islam. He thought people who 'wasted their time' praying were silly. No matter how much da'wah (calling, used to refer to inviting people to learn about Islam) the sheikh gave him, the man remained in this state. He then had a daughter, and this daughter became very sick. He went to so many doctors, even traveling abroad to Europe, but no one could help him. After that, he started praying and turning to Allah . Years later, his daughter was better and healthy. Both his dunya (this life) and akhira (the next life) were saved.

If we are close to Allah , it is to test our resilience. Are we only close to Allah  in times of ease, or does our trust extend to the times of hardship? When we are tested, do we leave the good deeds that we used to do? Allah  describes such people in the following verse:

 

 

"And of the people is he who worships Allah on an edge. If he is touched by good, he is reassured by it; but if he is struck by trial, he turns on his face [to the other direction]. He has lost [this] world and the Hereafter. That is what is the manifest loss." [Qur'an, 22:11]

This may seem counter-intuitive, but tests are also out of Allah's love. The Prophet  said, "When Allah loves a servant, He tests him," [Tirmidhi]. In a hadith qudsi (a hadith relating the words of Allah ), Allah  tells Jibreel to delay the response to the du`a' of a servant because Allah  loves hearing his voice [Tabarani]. Sometimes the answer to a test is that need for Allah , those long hours spent in the night, and the tears of sincerity.

May Allah  make us of those who constantly turn to Him, in hardship and ease.

Source: SuhaibWebb - Jinan Bastaki