What aspect of Allah do we Muslims fall in love with? If we say we fall in love with what He does, why should a person fall in love with the things that are done?

Dear Brother / Sister,

Love is the name of the feeling of liking very much. It is known that everybody has a feeling called love.

Love is a feeling related to the heart. Human heart loves the things that it regards beautiful. The heart does not have to take order from its owner and act in compliance with orders. The heart loves everything that it regards worthy of love – even if it is out of our will.  

The relationship between love and the things that are loved is a field of attraction that exists in human nature. According to the law of attraction, a magnet attracts the things that are within its scope of attraction; similarly, the potential of love attracts the lovely things, deeds, concepts and material/spiritual elements within its scope.  

The explanation of Badiuzzaman Said Nursi regarding the issue, quoting from al-Jurjani, is as follows:  

"Sayyid Sharif al-Jurjani wrote in Sharh al-Mawaqif: The cause of love is either pleasure, benefit, resemblance (that is, inclination towards creatures of same kind), or perfection. For perfection is loved for itself.”(Nursî, Sözler, p. 658)

As Nursi puts it, Sayyid Sharif al-Jurjani explains the issue as follows:

"Our love toward Allah is toward His absolute perfection. Our love toward other beings is toward His perfection imagined on that being. What is in question in that perfection is a pleasure, benefit or resemblance." ( al-Jurjani, S. Sharif, Sharh al-Mawaqif, 2/256-257)

Thus, according to the determination made by the experts of the issue, the elements that are included in the field of attraction of love are generally as follows: Beauty, perfection, inclination toward creatures of same kind and benefit.

Yes, every beauty is a source of pleasure;  all of those that give pleasure to the brain, palate, eye and ear are related to a beauty. What gives a person great pleasure by leading the mind to amazement and the heart to love is the perfection in those beings. A person’s loving his children, his parents, his siblings and close relatives is a reflection of the love that exists in human nature.

The elements that are beneficial and useful for humans are worth loving. The following principle summarizes this fact: “Man is a slave of good deeds (favors).”

We can easily state the following in the light of the explanations above: Love of Allah is the greatest love that includes all elements of love:

All of the attributes of Allah are beautiful. Not to love the unique spiritual beauty of Allah, who has beautiful attributes mercy, compassion and grace, which are free from all flaws, and who is absolutely beautiful.

Likewise, to love this mind-dazzling, eternal and unique perfection of Allah, who is known to possess the attributes of eternal knowledge, power, wisdom, holiness, grandeur, and glory with the witnessing of the wonderful art excellence of the universe that and its contents, which He created, is a necessary reflection of the potential love toward perfection that exists in the nature of man.

It is impossible for a person whose nature is intact and who is naturally grateful to favors and treats, not to love Allah, who created man out of nothing, filled the table of the earth with thousands of boons for him and presented it to him, who put the moon, the sun, the atmosphere, the air and the earth at his disposal, who will revive his good servants after death and put them into Paradise, where they will lead an eternal happy life, for the blessings and boons mentioned above and many other similar ones.  

Likewise, man, who knows profit and loss very well as a requirement of his nature, who does not like the loss at all, who craves for profit, and who has this beneficiary, utilitarian and pragmatist nature, will definitely love Allah, who provides him with all kinds of benefits, gives him the organs and faculties to gain both worlds, grants him this potential power and who has the key to all kinds of interests, and who has infinite mercy and power.

In short, can one think of a person who does not love Allah, who has perfect, unique, endless attributes of perfection and beauty, except for a person who does not recognize Allah truly and whose conscience has rotten? No definitely not. God forbid.

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