Skip to main content

Believers Do Not Fear God, They Love Him

Some people have problems reconciling the following truths.

First, it is rightly said that you can never love a person whom you fear
(a statement often ascribed to Aristotle). There is no room in the
heart for both fear and love towards the same person or thing. It is
either one, or none.

Second, the highest level of one’s piety is to fear God as He should be
feared (Al ‘Imran, 102).

Whenever God is mentioned, the hearts of true believers become full of fear (Al-Anfal, 2).

Third, believers are expected to love God more than anything else.
Not doing so is a serious spiritual deficiency (Al-Tawbah, 24).

Fourth, true believers, who follow the heavenly guidance, are supposed to have neither fear nor grief (Al-Baqarah, 38).

All of the above assertions are correct. The best way to reconcile
them is to carefully analyse the Quranic concepts of piety, fear, love
and man’s relationships with God, the Creator, and His creations. The
same concepts can be further explained in the light of the Prophet’s
Sunnah.

One should also bear in mind that the Arabic language is so reach and
diverse that sometimes two apparently synonymous words may be
significantly different. They may be a world of subtle meanings apart.

Thus, a main condition for truly excelling in any branch of Islamic
studies is the adequate knowledge of Arabic. Without that, more harm
than benefit can be generated, notwithstanding people’s sincere
intentions and the levels of their commitment. In passing, herein lies one of the main causes of the biggest predicaments Muslims face
today.

God reveals that He has sent it (the Quran) (Yusuf, 2), and has made
it (Al-Zukhruf, 3), an Arabic Quran that people may be able to
understand and learn wisdom.

That means that no proper understanding and wisdom (epistemology) are possible without the Quran, or the revealed knowledge, and without the Arabic language as its method and system of communication.

Born to Love and Be Brave

According to the Islamic worldview, people are created to love. They
learn how to hate. When they love, they stay true to themselves and
their primordial nature (fitrah).

To love is to be normal. That is why love is called hubb in Arabic.
Related to the same root word is the word habb, which means seed.

When a person is born, he is implanted with the seed (habb) of love
(hubb), which he is expected to grow and cultivate throughout his life.

To hate, conversely, is an anomaly. A person who hates is abnormal.
That is why hatred in Arabic is called karahiyyah. It is from the same
root word as the words akraha and ikrah, which mean “to force or compel” and “compulsion” respectively.

That implies when a person hates, he goes against his intrinsic nature. He forces an aberrant feeling and activity upon himself.

Read the full article here.

The post Believers Do Not Fear God, They Love Him appeared first on About Islam.



source https://aboutislam.net/reading-islam/research-studies/believers-do-not-fear-god-they-love-him/
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

List of Times and Places Where Dua is Accepted

A short reminder regarding the recommended times of dua . And I think what you need to know here is that the recommended times of dua or recommended things that can cause your dua to be accepted, can be divided into two sort of large groups: Am I Good Enough to Make Dua for Myself? Situations where your dua is accepted. Times where your dua is accepted So I’m going to very briefly mention them one after the other as much as possible. As for situations where your dua has been accepted: – The person who has been wronged or oppressed . – A person who finds themselves in severe difficulty after a calamity has struck. – The person who is traveling. – Someone who is fasting. – The one who is reciting the Quran or has just recited the Quran – Someone who is performing Hajj or Umrah or jihad. – The one who is making dua for someone in their absence . Because we know that when you make dua for someone in his absence an angel says: “ Ameen and to you”. – A person...
Post a Comment
Read More »

Ghuraba (The Strangers): Nasheed with English Subtitles

Islam began as something strange, and it shall return to being something strange, so give glad tidings the strangers. (Sahih Muslim 145) This famous nasheed has many versions; this one is from Muhammad al-Salman and has the subtitles in English embedded. [We are] strangers and we do not bow the foreheads to anyone besides Allah  […] Transliteration to help in the pronounciation:  Ghurabaa’ wa li ghairillaahi laa nahnil jibaa Aisha Stacey  wrote in an article for Aboutislam.net : “I think that many of you would agree that being Muslim in the 21st century makes you well acquainted with being strange. It might even be a metaphor for random, as in you have been randomly selected. […] many converts to Islam will tell you about feeling as if they were strangers, before finding Islam. They will speak of feeling that they belonged somewhere else that their lives were just slightly off center. They often speak about a vague sense of knowing they were not like everyone else...
Post a Comment
Read More »

Taqwa – Living the Main Purpose of Ramadan

Taqwa is a major purpose for the month of Ramadan. The people of taqwa are those who do the things that they are commanded and avoid the things which Allah has made prohibitive. And evidently, to reach a state of taqwa requires vigilance, it requires patience and sincerity. The verse is pertaining to fasting I found in a single set of verses in chapter 2 starting at verse 183: O you who have believed, decreed upon you is fasting as it was decreed upon those before you that you may become righteous. ( 2:183 ) A Collective Act of Worship Allah is telling us that fasting has been made obligatory and then Allah tells us that just as it was prescribed for those before us. We often get asked this question in Ramadan, “how’s the fast going for us?” And if we gave ourselves a moment to think about it, we see that Allah Most High has made the fast inside the month of Ramadan easy for us because we know that there is a collective spirit to fasting; we know that we’re not alone in this ...
Post a Comment
Read More »