WHOM GOD LOVES
GOD’s Life is incomprehensible to us because it is absolute and unconditional, whereas our lives are bounded by birth and death and dependent upon innumerable circumstances. GOD’s Love, however, expands His symbolic range in a completely different direction.
We have to recognize here that love, like will, is best used as a verb. That is because the quality of love is determined not only by the lover but also by its object, by its ‘beloved’. Love is a moral act, an act that is deliberate and selective. AL-LAH is Kind and Generous with humanity in general, but His Love has to be discerning and focused if it is to mean anything to those whom He loves. He does not love indiscriminately; rather His Love is manifested in mutuality – in those who love Him. Just as a man who loves all women equally cannot be said to love his wife in any way that matters to her, so is GOD’s Love a prize to be striven for and treasured rather than a birthright dispensed to all and sundry regardless of merit.
Strangely enough, though the boundless Life of GOD seems so remote from what we experience as life, the love of an Infinite, Eternal Deity for particular mortals does not jar our sense of fittingness, given what we know about love. Perhaps we expect love to be illogical or paradoxical, since it rarely can be justified by any other standard but its own. There is something divine in how powerful and transformative love can be, and how freely it goes about its own business without regard for any other measure. The mysteries of love are, for many people, the most convincing proof of GOD’s involvement in the world, as nothing but the Supremely Transcendent could possibly explain the everyday presence of the unexplainable.
عَنْ سَلْمَانَ، قَالَ قَالَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ صلى الله عليه وسلم ” إِنَّ اللَّهَ خَلَقَ يَوْمَ خَلَقَ السَّمَوَاتِ وَالأَرْضَ مِائَةَ رَحْمَةٍ كُلُّ رَحْمَةٍ طِبَاقَ مَا بَيْنَ السَّمَاءِ وَالأَرْضِ فَجَعَلَ مِنْهَا فِي الأَرْضِ رَحْمَةً فَبِهَا تَعْطِفُ الْوَالِدَةُ عَلَى وَلَدِهَا وَالْوَحْشُ وَالطَّيْرُ بَعْضُهَا عَلَى بَعْضٍ فَإِذَا كَانَ يَوْمُ الْقِيَامَةِ أَكْمَلَهَا بِهَذِهِ الرَّحْمَةِ ”
Divine Love is thus well within its right to leap over the boundary between the infinite and the finite, between the eternal and the mortal, and to draw the greatest good in worldly life into the ambit of the everlasting. Somehow, we know that love in the form of Mercy is far more profound and awesome than the mere workings of biological drives and animal instincts. Divine Love is one of the most beautiful absolutes we have all experienced in some form or another. GOD personifies it; He is its source. But why is He not named as Love (hubb or wadd) in the Qur’an?
AL-LAH is not identified as Love for the same reason that He is not described as Praise or Praising. (Rather He is the Praised or Praiseworthy, the object of praise). Love and praise are actions whose ambivalence, whose capacity for both good and evil, or truth and falsehood, are of their very nature. We tend to think of love as all positive, but it is not. The worship of gods other than AL-LAH is an example of misplaced love, false reverence, and damnable praise. Light and life are absolutes that need no moral qualification to be applicable to GOD, but love, while totally beautiful when it comes from GOD or is returned to Him, produces all sorts of mischief and sin when idolized alone, regardless of its attributes and circumstances, as it seems to be nowadays in secular society.
The GOD You Already Know 