Love in Islamic Thought

1

William C. Chittick


Western studies of Islam have paid relatively little attention to love. Early scholars
were heirs to a long history of European animosity toward this upstart religion and tended to
assume that love was a Christian monopoly. When Muslim writing on love did come to their
attention, they typically considered it peripheral or borrowed, often by classifying it as Sufi.
As Carl Ernst explains, The term Sufi-ism was invented at the end of the eighteenth century, as
an appropriation of those portions of Oriental culture that Europeans found attractive. The
essential feature of the definitions of Sufism that appeared at this time was the insistence that
Sufism had no intrinsic relation with the faith of Islam (Ernst 1997, p. 9). The tendency to
place Sufism on the margins of the Islamic tradition has persisted in Western literature, even
though so-called mainstream Islamic theology has always been an elite enterprise with
relatively little influence on the Muslim masses, while Sufi teachings have permeated most
Muslim societies down into recent times.
One of the first scholarly expositions of love in Islamic thought came with Emil
Fackenheims 1944 translation of The treatise on love by Avicenna (d. 1037), the greatest of
the early Muslim philosophers. In 1955 Helmut Ritter published a comprehensive historical
analysis of love theories, part of his massive study of the great Persian poet Far!d al-D!n "A##$r
(d. 1221; English translation 2003, especially pp. 360-592). Lois Anita Giffen surveyed a series of
classical Arabic texts on interpersonal love in Theory of Profane Love among the Arabs (1971).
Joseph Norment Bell (1979) wrote a careful study of the role of love in the writings of well-
known Hanbalite theologians like Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 1350).
William Chittick surveyed the teachings of R%m! (d. 1273) in The Sufi Path of Love (1983).
Binyamin Abrahamov summarized the views of Mu&ammad al-Ghaz$l! (d. 1111) and Ibn
Dabb$gh (d. 1296) in Divine Love in Islamic Mysticism (2003) and wrote a good outline of the role
played by love in the teachings of Ibn al-"Arab!, arguably the foremost Muslim theoretician of
love (Abrahamov 2009). Chittick analyzed the major themes of love as they apply to theology,
cosmology, and spiritual psychology in Divine Love (2013a), arguing that love stands at the
center of the Islamic tradition.

1
Published in Religion Compass 8/7 (2014), pp. 22938; this version has a more complete bibliography.

2
Important English translations of theological and mystical treatises on love include the
first Arabic book combining Sufi and philosophical views (Daylam! 2006); Mu&ammad al-
Ghaz$l!s chapters on love from his Arabic I!y"# $ul%m al-d&n (Ghaz$l! 2011) and his Persian
K&miy"-yi sa$"dat (Ghaz$l! 2002); the most famous Persian prose classic on love, the Saw"ni! of
al-Ghaz$l!s younger brother, A&mad (d. 1126; A&mad Ghaz$l! 1986); the poetical works of the
greatest Arabic love poet, Ibn al-F$ri' (d. 1235; Homerin 2001); the Lama$"t, a Persian prose
classic on love by a second-generation student of Ibn al-"Arab!, Fakhr al-D!n "Ir$q! (d. 1289;
"Ir$q! 1982); and Beauty and Love by (eyh Galip (d. 1799; Galip 2005), a Turkish poet whose work
shows the manner in which earlier theories of love were integrated into later literature.
If relatively few modern scholars have concerned themselves with love in Islamic
thought, this is partly because most have focused either on jurisprudence, with its multifarious
social and political repercussions, or dialectical theology (Kalam). The concerns and
methodological presuppositions of these two schools left little room for love. Jurists addressed
right and wrong activity, and the most they could say was that sexual love has legitimate and
illegitimate forms. Dialectical theologians stressed divine transcendence to such a degree that
they considered Gods love for human beings as nothing but His concern for their welfare, and
human love for God as obedience to His commands. Naturally, this interpretation was much to
the liking of the jurists, since it bolstered their authority and social status. Ibn al-"Arab! was
objecting to the approach of dialectical theology when he wrote, If we had remained with our
rational proofswhich, in the opinion of the rational thinkers, establish knowledge of God's
Essence, showing that He is not like this and not like thatno created thing would ever have
loved God (Chittick 1989, p. 180).
Two other schools that addressed theological issues understood love as central both to
God and to all contingent reality. The first to appear historically was philosophy, an elite
undertaking that had a disproportionate influence on theological thinking generally. The
second was Sufism, which developed the implications of divine and human love in by far the
most detail. In using the word Sufism I am referring to a wide variety of influential teachers
and saints, many of whom wrote books, some prolifically (Chittick 2008b). Like philosophers,
Sufis described love as a divine energy that brings about the creation of the universe and
drives every individual being to its own perfection. Avicenna summarizes this understanding
in his typical style: If the Absolute Good did not disclose Itself, nothing would be received
from It. If nothing were received from It, nothing would exist..., for Its self-disclosure (tajall&) is
the cause of every existence. And since, by Its very existence, It loves the existence of
everything caused by It, It loves the reception of Its self-disclosure (Chittick 2013a, p. 286). For
their part Sufis preferred the mythic language of the Quran and Hadith. In making the same
point that Avicenna just made, they would typically cite the divine saying, I was a Hidden
3
Treasure, and I loved to be recognized, so I created the creatures that I might be recognized
(Chittick 2013a, pp. 18-19). Much more than the philosophers, Sufis stressed the practical
teachings of the Quran, specifically that human beings must respond to Gods creative love by
loving Him in return. They disseminated their teachings not only by personal example, but
also by writing books and immensely popular poetry, which was recited and sung among all
tiers of society, even the illiterate.
Scholars who wrote about love acknowledged the impossibility of defining it, generally
taking the position that either you have experienced love, in which case you know what it is,
or you have not, in which case it cannot be explained to you. Nonetheless, they were happy to
elaborate upon its signs and symptoms, and this explains why many books, not to mention
reams of poetry, were written in celebration of its joys and sorrows. Scholars with a
meticulous bent listed subtle differences in connotation among as many as eighty Arabic
words designating love (Giffen 1971, pp. 83-96; Bell 1979, pp. 148-81). The Quran itself, as a
recent study has shown (Ghazi 2013), uses nearly thirty words to specify varieties of love.
Two Quranic words are typically translated as love, !ubb and wudd, the first of which
became the standard term in later discussions. From the second is derived the Quranic divine
name, al-wad%d, the Loving. The most important related divine attributes is ra!ma, mercy or
compassion, a motherly quality that belies the patriarchal image of God put forth by jurists
and dialectical theologians. The word ra!ma is derived from the word ra!im, womb, a point
that leads to subtle meditations on divine creativity (Murata 1993, pp. 203-22). The Quran
makes mercy a fundamental attribute of God, as in the verse, Call upon God, or call upon the
All-Merciful; whichever you call upon, to Him belong the most beautiful names (17:110). God
makes His motherly mercy more fundamental than His patriarchal face in the famous !ad&th
quds&, My mercy takes precedence over My wrath. The Prophet said that God is more
merciful to His servant than any mother to her child, and those who quote this saying typically
have in mind the universal meaning of the word servant, as in the Quranic verse, There is
nothing in the heavens and the earth that does not come to the All-Merciful as a servant
(19:93). The Quran confirms this interpretation when it says that Gods mercy embraces
everything (7:156), which is to say that His motherly love extends to all that exists.
Mercys important role in much of Islamic thought is prefigured by the formula that
begins practically every chapter of the Quran: In the name of God, the All-Merciful, the Ever-
Merciful. Grammatically these two names of mercy, ra!m"n and ra!&m, mean the same thing.
The fact that God calls Himself by two names with the same meaning led to numerous
meditations on the varieties of divine mercy and the manner in which they reverberate
throughout the universe and the human soul. The general picture is that God as All-Merciful
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creates the universe and all that it contains, and God as Ever-Merciful responds to those who
love Him with additional love and mercy (Chittick 2013a, pp. 23-35).
The Quran does not name any objects of Gods love other than human beings, while it
stresses that He has a special love for those who manifest His qualities and characteristics.
Here the notion of beauty plays a prominent role, and indeed the aesthetic dimension to love,
so prominent in the theoretical writings and the poetic tradition, is obvious in the Quran. The
Prophet famously said that God is beautiful and He loves beauty, using the word jam"l, a saying
that clearly implies that Gods first object of love is Himself, the possessor of absolute beauty.
As later teachers explain, His unity demands that in Himself He be lover, beloved, and love
(Daylam! 2005, p. 59; al-Ghaz$l! 2011, pp. 101-2).
In talking of beauty, the Quran uses the word !usn, a synonym for jam"l. Translators
often render !usn and derivatives as good, with an unfortunate loss of connotation. After all,
the Quran describes God as possessing the most beautiful names (al-asm"# al-!usn"), and few
would read this as the best names. The Book alludes to the correspondence between divine
and human beauty in the verse, We created man in the most beautiful stature (95:4). This
helps explain why the Prophet said, echoing the Hebrew Bible, that God created Adam in His
own image.
In sixteen verses the Quran declares that God loves specific individuals, designating
them by their beautiful traits. Most frequently (five times) it mentions the mu!sin%n, the
beautiful-doers, that is, those who live up to their own most beautiful stature by putting it
into practice. Next most commonly it mentions the muttaq%n, the godwary, those who are
constantly aware of Gods presence and take care to observe His instructions. Another twenty-
three verses mention ugly traits and activities that God does not love, such as transgression,
wrongdoing, ingratitude, and arrogance.
In the Persianate world the preferred word for love was usually the non-Quranic $ishq,
which also played a prominent role in Arabic love poetry and was used by scholars to translate
the Greek eros. When the philosophical fraternity known as the Brethren of Purity (Ikhw$n al-
)af$*, 10
th
century) wrote an Arabic treatise on love, they used $ishq in the title and described
how it is found in all that exists, though they also used the word !ubb when talking about the
mutual love between God and man. For his part Avicenna used the word $ishq exclusively in his
treatise on love, describing it as a quality present in God and all things. The dialectical
theologians rejected the use of $ishq in reference to God, while some of the early Sufis
considered it permissible and others did not (al-Ghaz$l! 2013, pp. xv-xvii; Bell 1979, pp. 162-67).
In his seminal Persian treatise on love, A&mad Ghaz$l! had no doubt about the words
appropriateness for both divine and human love, and after him $ishq and !ubb were frequently
used interchangeably in Persian and other Islamic languages (Lumbard 2007).
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One of the most common Persian words for love is d%st&, which also means friendship.
In early texts it was used to translate not only !ubb but also wal"ya, which is derived from wal&,
friend. The Quran says that God is the friend of the believers and that the believers are the
friends of God. The word gradually came to be applied to deceased Muslims revered by the
community, which helps explain why Western scholars have usually translated it as saint.
Theoretical works on divine friendship explained what it implied for the human soul, though
dialectical theologians were not happy with the notion (Landolt 1987; Radtke and OKane 1996;
Chodkiewicz 1993; Renard 2008).
Western scholars have sometimes spoken of two basic approaches to love, the profane
and the mystical (or sacred), though they acknowledge that it is difficult to draw a line (Giffen
1971, p. xi; Bell and Al Shafie 2005, p. xi). Some of the outstanding authors of books on profane
love, such as Mu&ammad ibn D$w%d (d. 910), were also major religious scholars (Giffen 1971, p.
8). Indeed the most famous text in the genre, 'awq al-!am"ma (The Ring of the Dove),
translated into several European languages, was written by the Andalusian Ibn +azm (d. 1064),
one of the foremost jurists and theologians of his time (Ibn +azm 1953).
Cosmi c and Human Love
Thought about love can be considered Islamic when it goes back to the three principles
of faith, which are taw!&d (the assertion of divine unity), prophecy, and the Return to God. The
first and second principles are set down succinctly in the Shahadah: There is no god but God,
and Mu&ammad is Gods Messenger. The first half of this formula, commonly called the
sentence that asserts (Gods) unity (kalimat al-taw!&d), means that nothing is truly divine but
God, nothing truly real but the Real, nothing truly merciful but the All-Merciful, and so on
with every divine name. The second half means that God reveals Himself to human beings
with the goal of guiding them to their ultimate good. The two statements have countless
implications for the human situation, perhaps the most important of which is the third
principle: all things return to God, willingly or unwillingly (Murata and Chittick 1994, Chapter
3; Chittick 2010a; Chittick 2012b, Chapter 1).
Given that the Shahadah addresses first the reality of God and second Gods
relationship with human beings, it gave rise to two basic ways of envisaging God: in Himself
and in relation to man. In Himself, God is the absolute truth and reality that rules over all that
exists, whether guidance or misguidance, beauty or ugliness, love or hatred. In relation to
man, God is the guide who offers criteria to differentiate between beauty and ugliness and
issues instructions on how to cling to the one and avoid the other. From the standpoint of God
in Himself, all things are beautiful, for He made beautiful all that He created (Quran 32:7).
From the standpoint of God as guide, some things are beautiful and some ugly. In other terms,
6
God as All-Merciful encompasses all things, whereas God as Ever-Merciful singles out for
special favors those who choose the beautiful over the ugly. By and large, philosophers
stressed the reality of God in Himself, whereas dialectical theologians and jurists claimed that
God as guide trumps all else. Sufi theoreticians strove to find a balance between the two
standpoints.
Just as Muslim thinkers distinguished between God in Himself and God as guide, so also
they spoke of two sorts of divine love: a universal love for all human beings and all creation,
and a particular love for those who put love for God into practice (Chittick 2012a; 2013a, pp. 9-
11). God loves everything that He createdbeautiful and ugly, pious and sinner, saved and
damnedand as the All-Merciful He bestows mercy on all creatures without exception. This
universal mercy, however, does not guarantee the salvation of any given individual (though
some thinkers, following the logic of universality, disagree; Chittick 2005, Chapter 9). God as
the Ever-Merciful guides human beings, the unique possessors of free will, and tells them that
He has a special, saving love for those who freely strive to become adorned with beauty, love,
compassion, forgiveness, and other divine attributes. That God should have these two sorts of
love should not be surprising, since we take its analogue for granted in human affairs. A
mother may have an unconditional love for her child, but this does not contradict her desire
for the child to be on its own and actualize its full possibilities.
Sufi authors, with their constant concern to bring out the deeper implications of the
Quran, found a reference to Gods unconditional love in two clauses extracted from verse 5:54:
He loves them, and they love Him. This abbreviated verse was cited more often than any
other Quranic verse in discussions of love. It was typically read as a statement that God loves
human beings eternally and unconditionally, and that human beings love God by their very
nature. Scholars acknowledged that it can also be read as a statement of conditional love,
especially when put back into the context of the whole verse (Chittick 2013a, pp. 9-10).
Given Gods eternity, He loves them means that God loves human beings outside of
time and without regard to their situation in the universe. He has known them forever just as
they are, and He created them because of love while knowing all their faults and shortcomings
(Chittick 2013a, Chapter 2). In one of numerous passages explaining Gods unconditional love,
A&mad Sam"$n! (d. 1140), probably the greatest theologian of love writing in the Persian
language, put these words into Gods mouth:
If I were to let you go free, to whom would I give you? If I did not want you, to
whom would I leave you? Even if you become weary of My gentleness, I will not
become weary of your disobedience. Even if you cannot carry My burden, My great
mercy will buy you along with all your offenses. (Chittick 2013a, p. 102)
Understandably, dialectical theologians, with their focus on God as guide, were
7
unhappy with those who spoke of Gods universal love, not least because they feared people
would trust in Gods mercy and ignore the revealed law. They stressed Quranic references to
loves conditionality, verses saying that people will receive Gods love only if they follow His
guidance; e.g., Surely those who have faith and do wholesome deeds, to them the All-Merciful
will assign love (19:96). Western studies of love have mostly followed the lead of the
dialectical theologians, often reaching the conclusion that Islam does not have a notion of
unconditional love, in contrast to the New Testament (Rahbar 1960; Nickel 2009).
Just as He loves them was often understood as a statement of the divine nature, a
statement that is always and forever true, so also the following clause, they love Him was
understood as a statement of human nature, a fact of life that extends ad infinitum. As for the
claim of many people that they do not love God, this can be chalked up to ignorance. One of
the common ways of explaining this ignorance was to distinguish between real and
metaphorical love, terminology that has in view the well known saying, The metaphor is the
bridge to the reality (al-maj"z qan(arat al-!aq&qa). Lovers who think that they love other than
God, whatever the other may be, have taken the metaphor as the reality. As R%m! sometimes
says, people should not be satisfied with sunlight on a wall but should turn back to the sun
itself (Chittick 1983, p. 202).
Echoing Avicenna, Ibn al-"Arab! writes, There is nothing in the existent realm that is
not a lover (Chittick 2005, p. 33). What makes human beings unique in their love is that they
alone were created in Gods image, which means that they alone can recognize God in Himself
and love Him for Himself, even if they usually confuse the metaphor with the reality.
Creatures like plants, animals, and angels also love God, but they love Him for the existence
and blessings that they receive from Him. When people love God for what they can get, they
fail to live up to their human stature.
In short, when the Quran says, They love Him, this can mean that human beings love
God by nature. Their love for Him is real, and love for anything else is metaphorical and
illusory. The Quran criticizes metaphorical love in many verses, as when it speaks of love for
appetites: women, children, heaped-up heaps of gold and silver, horses of mark, cattle, tillage
(3:14). This is not to say that love for others is illegitimate, simply that love for metaphors
must be subordinated to love for the absolute Reality. The Quran mentions among Gods
blessings that He established love and mercy (30:21) between spouses, and various hadiths
point out that people should love each other as a function of their love for God (Chittick 2013a,
pp. 330-38).
Inasmuch as the verse of mutual loveHe loves them, and they love Himis a
statement of the actual situation, it offers no prescription for curing addiction to metaphors.
The Quran mentions the cure in the second most commonly cited verse on love: Say [O
8
Muhammad!]: If you love God, follow me; God will love you (3:31). Once people recognize
that they love God by nature, they will understand that they need help to put their love into
practice. Help comes in the form of prophetic guidance, which explains how people should go
about loving God.
When people actively engage in the quest for God by following the prophetic model,
they are attempting to overcome ugliness and actualize beauty. The beautiful qualities that
may accrue to their souls are the main topic in philosophical and theological ethics as well as
in countless volumes written by Sufi teachers. Philosophers had the divine beauty in mind
when they spoke of the goal of human life as deiformity (ta#alluh) or, as al-Ghaz$l! and most
Sufis preferred, becoming characterized by the character traits of God (al-takhalluq bi akhl"q
all"h; Chittick 2011a). Avicenna sums up Islamic ethics when he explains that God loves those
who have achieved deiformity: The love of the Most Excellent for Its own excellence is
the most excellent love, so Its true beloved is that Its self-disclosure be received. This is the
reality of Its reception by deiform souls. This is why it may be said that they are Its beloveds
(Chittick 2013a, pp. 286-87).
Many Sufis talked about actualizing beautiful character traits in terms of ascending
stations (maq"m) on the path to God. They made clear that beauty of character means
conformity with the soul of the Prophet, whom the Quran describes as possessing a
magnificent character (68:4). To the degree that his followers succeed in emulating his
beauty, God will love them: Follow me; God will love you. If jurists qua jurists could only say
that following the Prophet is to act as the Prophet acted, Sufi teachers held that following him
demands transformation of the soul (Chittick 2013a, pp. 150ff.).
Love s Consummati on
In short, from the divine standpoint, God loves human beings unconditionally. This,
however, does not necessarily mean that His love will bring about their happiness after death,
even if, as the Quran puts it, God forgives sins altogether (39:53). Although God as Creator
loves all creatures, God as guide loves people who follow His guidance and strive to recover
their own innate love for Him. In discussing the third principle of faith, the return to God,
dialectical theologians spoke of reward and punishment, felicity and wretchedness, paradise
and hell. The troubadours of love responded that all this is well and good, because people owe
it to their Creator to follow His guidance. But acting in fear of hell or in hope for paradise is
not love. It is the work of mercenaries. If you expect a payback, that is self-interest. Lovers
forget themselves and surrender totally to their beloved.
In their treatise on love the Brethren of Purity concluded that the most adequate
definition of love is intense yearning for unification, adding that unification (itti!"d) pertains
9
specifically to the soul and spirit, which is to say that it cannot properly belong to bodily
things (Chittick 2013a, pp. 280-83). In the more graphic language preferred by Sufi teachers
and poets, the goal of love is union (wi)"l), a word that was also used for sexual love. Here a
third scriptural reference to love, this time a !ad&th quds& (an extra-Quranic saying of God
narrated by the Prophet), is quoted almost as often as the two mentioned Quranic verses: My
servant never ceases drawing near to Me through good works until I love him, and when I love
him, I am the hearing with which he hears, the eyesight with which he sees, the hand through
with he holds, and the foot with which he walks. This is a strikingly explicit statement of the
situation of a human soul that has followed the divine guidance and reached union with the
true Beloved.
In talking of the ascending stages on the path to God, Mu&ammad al-Ghaz$l! is not
untypical when he says that love is the highest (Ghaz$l! 2002, p. 1; 2011, p. 2). His brother
A&mad took the position that love is in fact a proper designation for the Absolute Reality in
Itself. Once it is actualized, both lover and beloved cease to exist, for the divine unity does not
allow for duality (Chittick 2013a, pp. 418-20; Lumbard 2007). A&mad and others point out that
by following in the Prophets footsteps, lovers are trying to surrender themselves to love.
Once love takes over, nothing remains of human volition. Such loss of volition is in fact a
matter of common experience in metaphorical love, which can render people helpless before
its power. One historian of the early period of Arabic love poetry sums up the lovers surrender
to love in terms that apply equally to later Sufi poetry: The poet-lover places his beloved on a
pedestal and worships her from afar. He is obsessed and tormented; he becomes debilitated, ill,
and is doomed to a love-death (Allen 2000, p. 105).
Sufis expounded the nature of love with the goal of bringing people to acknowledge
their own existential plight, that is, their separation from what they truly love. If people could
achieve union, the story would be over, because human nature would be utterly effaced. Most
authors, however, held that full union can never be reached before death. Some said explicitly
that love goes on foreverwhat else can explain the everlasting bliss of paradise and the
endless torment of hell? After all, paradise and hell are simply designations for union and
separation in the language of reward and punishment (Chittick 1979, p. 156; Chittick 2013a, pp.
345-46).
Love demands death to self-centeredness and rebirth in the beloved. Here a saying of
the Prophet is often quoted by theorists of both profane and sacred love: He who loves,
conceals, stays chaste, and dies, dies a martyr. Stories of lovers who die in yearning for their
beloved are standard fare in Islamic literature (Giffen 1971, pp. 99-115; Chittick 1983a, pp. 183-
86; 2013a, pp. 369-75). Sufi authors often held up the famous martyr al-+all$j as an example of
a lover who gladly embraces death for his Beloved (Massignon 1982; Ernst 1985). Some went so
10
far as to cite Iblis (Satan) as the model lover. So devoted was he to his true Beloved that he was
ready to suffer the pain of everlasting separation if that is what his Beloved wanted (Awn
1983).
Coming back to love poetry in all its varieties, nothing is more typical of the genre than
celebrating the beauty of the beloved and bemoaning the plight of the lover. This in fact is the
overall theme of Sufi literature and, one could argue, the Quran itself: Human beings exist in a
state of suffering because they do not have what they want. They are lovers by nature, and
metaphorical love can only satisfy temporarily. A great Quran commentator like Rash!d al-D!n
Maybud! (6
th
/12
th
century) interpreted all stories of the prophets as descriptions of the trials
and tribulations of lovers in their quest for union (Maybud! 2014). In this reading, the Quran
guides people to a true awareness of themselves, and such awareness is nothing but the painful
recognition of separation from what they really love. In the very first line of his 25,000-verse
love epic, the Mathnaw&, R%m! points out that separation is the crux of love: Listen to this reed
as it complains, telling the tale of separation. Thus did Sufi teachers place love at the center
of Islamic thought and practice, explaining its significance in the context of the three
principlestaw!&d, prophecy, and the Return. They spoke of religiosity not by splitting
theological hairs or enumerating juridical dos and donts, but rather by stirring up nostalgia
for the true Beloved in their listeners hearts.

11
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