Ibn Hazm al-Andalusī - On the Nature of Love

… Allah Himself says, “It is He that created you of one soul, and fashioned thereof its spouse, that he might find repose in her” (Koran VII I8g). Be it noted that the reason God assigns for man’s reposing in woman is that she was made out of him.

We therefore conclude that Love is something within the soul itself.

…Love, as we know, is of various kinds.

The noblest sort, of Love is that which exists between persons who love each other in God either because of an identical zeal for the righteous work upon which they are engaged, or as the result of a harmony in sectarian belief and principles, or by virtue of a common possession of some noble knowledge.

Next to this is the love, which springs from kinship;

then the love of familiarity and the sharing of identical aims;

the love of comradeship and acquaintance;

the love, which is rooted in a benevolent regard for one’s fellow;

the love that results from coveting the loved one’s worldly elevation;

the love that is based upon a shared secret which both must conceal;

love for the sake of getting enjoyment and satisfying desire;

and passionate love, that has no other cause but that union of souls to which we have referred above.

The Messenger of Allah confirms this about the soul, through a story related by ‘Aa’ishah (may Allaah be pleased with her): ‘A woman used to go to Quraysh and make them laugh. She came to Madinah and stayed with a woman who also made people laugh.

The Prophet (blessings and peace of Allaah be upon him) said: With whom is So and so staying? She said: With So and so, who makes people laugh. He said: “Souls are like conscripted soldiers; those whom they recognize, they get along with, and those whom they do not recognize, they will not get along with.” ‘ (Sahih Al-Bukhari)

http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/hazm/dove/ringdove.html

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Accolades aside,  it’s really a book on ‘iraadah & himaa – will, aspiration & goals…

If read through the lens of a seeker, the book actually translates to lessons in Tawhid – active afirmation of the Oneness of the Divine, Tazkiyat al-Nafs – purification of/from the self  & Mujahidaah - spiritual struggle against the self, for the heart…

This post is really meant to be a place-marker for a longer post on the parallels that the book draws for those seekers with the highest of all aspirations – the source of all aspirations:  Allaah

Once i actually finish it, and if i can return more learned/practiced on Tazkiyat al-Nafs, perhaps a longer post may be justified.

But writing more now may be somewhat audacious.  Remember, when as kids, we use to rebuttal on the playgrounds to other name-calling kids, with:
“.. it takes one to know one!”
(perhaps it takes one to write about those ones, those seekers, as well…)

Until then, here are some nuggets from the intro to hold you over with -

On the success of ‘The Alchemist’, Paul Coelho intros the book with the following:

“…people are beginning to ask:  What’s the secret behind such a huge success?

The only honest response is: I don’t know.  All I know is that, like Santiago the shepard boy, we all need to be aware of our personal calling.  What is a personal calling?  It is God’s blessing, it is the path that God chose for you here on Earth.  Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend.  However, we don’t all have the courage to confront our own dreams.

Why?

There are four obstacles.  First: we are told from childhood onward that everything we want to do is impossible.  We grow up with this idea, and as the years accumulate, so too do the layers of prejudice, fear and guilt.  There comes a time when our personal calling is so deeply buried in our soul as to be invisible.  But it’s still there.

If we have the courage to disinter dream, we are then faced by the second obstacle: love.  We know what we want to do, but are afraid of hurting those around us by abandoning everything in order to pursue our dream.  We do not realize that love is just a further impetus, not something that will prevent us from going forward.  We do not realize that those who genuinely wish us well want us to be happy and are prepared to accompany us on that journey.

Once we have accepted that love is a stimulus, we come up against the third obstacle: fear of the defeats we will meet on the path.  We who fight for our dream suffer far more when it doesn’t work out, because we cannot fall back on the old excuse: “Oh well, I didn’t really want it anyways.”  We do want it and know that we have staked everything on it and that the path of the personal calling is no easier than any other path, except that our whole heart is in this journey.  Then we warriors of light must be prepared to have patience in difficult times and to know that the Universe is conspiring in our favor, even though we may not understand how.

I ask myself: are defeats necessary?

Well, necessary or not, they happen.  When we first begin fighting for our dream, we have no experience and make many mistakes.  The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.

So, why is it important to live our personal calling if we are only going to suffer more than other people?

Because, once we have overcome the defeats – and we always do – we are filled by a greater sense of euphoria and confidence.  In the silence of our hearts, we know that we are proving ourselves worthy of the miracle of life.  Each day, each hour, is part of the good fight.  We start to live with enthusiasm and pleasure.  Intense, unexpected suffering passes more quickly than suffering that is apparently bearable; the latter goes on for years and, without our noticing, eats away at our soul, until, one day, we are no longer able to free ourselves from the bitterness and it stays with us for the rest of our lives.

Having disinterred our dream, having used the power of love to nurture it and spent many years living with the scars, we suddenly notice that what we always wanted is there, waiting for us, perhaps the very next day.  Then comes the fourth obstacle: the fear of realizing the dream for which we fought all our lives.

Oscar Wilde said: “Each man kills the thing he loves.”  And it’s true.  The mere possibility of getting what we want fills the soul of the ordinary person with guilt.  We look around at those who have failed to get what they want and feel that we do not deserve to get what we want either.  We forget about all the obstacles we overcame, all the suffering we endured, all the things we had to give up in order to get this far.  I have known alot of people who, when their personal calling was within their grasp, went on to commit a series of stupid mistakes and never reached their goal – when it was only a step away.

This is the most dangerous of the obstacles because it has a kind of saintly aura about it: renouncing joy and conquest.  But if you believe yourself worthy of the thing you fought so hard to get, then you become an instrument of God, you help the Soul of the World, and you understand why you are here.”

Paulo Coelho
Rio de Janeiro
November 2002
Translated by Margaret Jull Costa

[End of Introduction to The Alchemist]

“She believed in me when the people disbelieved in me,

she trusted me when people said I was not trustworthy,

and she gave me her money when people prevented me –

and I was given the rizq of her love” (rizqtu hubbaha… )

- Shaykh Ninowy, Love Takes Time (Pt 7/10 @ 0:27 mark)

When combined with the Prophetic criteria for/of love, in the 2nd verse of his du’aa of hubb – it’s beautiful:

و حُبَّ مَنْ يَنفَعُنِي حُبُّهُ عِنْدَكَ

“… And the love of the one: whose love benefits me with You …”

http://kuhlsnotes.wordpress.com/2007/07/18/du’a-of-hubb-du’a-of-habibullaah/

——–

“But she sacrificed all her wealth and everything she had
And he honored her, and gave her faith,
when the times were bad, when times were bad…

Now years have passed, times had changed, since Khadijah breathed her last.
And the Message of the one true God, was spreading far and vast
But then he came across a jewellery, that Khajidah once had worn
His eyes began to swell with tears, his heart again began to mourn

Cause she was there for him, when times were rough, and his enemies were cruel
Was the first believer, so keen and eager, to comfort ar-Rasool”

- Zain Bhikha, ‘Zamilooni, Dathirooni’ (Envelop me, Embrace me)

[www.student.britannica.com/eb/art/print?id=90668&articleTypeId=0]

I have my own theory on the end of this version of the story – as it appears as the prologue to The Alchemist, an allegorical novel by Brazilian author Paulo Coelho -

[www.amazon.ca]

PROLOGUE
Translated by Clifford E. Landers

The alchemist picked up a book that someone in the caravan had bought.  Leafing through the pages, he found a story about Narcissus.

The alchemist knew that legend of Narcissus, a youth who knelt daily beside a lake to contemplate his own beauty.  He was so fascinated by himself that, one morning, he fell into the lake and drowned.  At the spot where he fell, a flower was born, which was called the narcissus.

But this was not how the author of the book ended the story.

He said that when Narcissus died, the goddesses of the forest appeared and found the lake, which had been fresh water, transformed into a lake of salty tears.

“Why do you weep?” the goddesses asked.

“I weep for Narcissus,” the lake replied.

“Ah, it is no surprise that you weep for Narcissus,” they said, “for though we always pursued him in the forest, you alone could contemplate his beauty close at hand.”

“But … was Narcissus beautiful?” the lake asked.

“Who better than you to know that?” the goddesses said in wonder.  ”After all, it was by your banks that he knelt each day to contemplate himself!”

The lake was silent for some time.  Finally, it said:

“I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful.  I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected.”

“What a lovely story,” the alchemist thought.

[End of Prologue to The Alchemist]

> I have my own theory of Narcissus, that perhaps – just as the lake who would revel in the Divinely-gifted beauty of it’s reflection – perhaps Narcissus was only doing the same…

Perchance he learned well from his teacher and was taught him to pray the Prophetic prayer when he looked in a mirror, of:

“Oh Lord, just as you have beautified my external appearance – khalq – please dear Lord, beautiful my internal character – akhlaaq.”

Concurrently, perhaps the second learned lesson that he was practicing may be what his teacher taught him when looking at the creation of The Creator:

“Learn to look not at the creation, and thus be limited by it.  But learn to look through the creation, and thus to it’s Unlimited Creator – Allah.”

 

Shaykh Hamza told one of the most beautiful stories on love and unrequited love during the RIS Knowledge Retreat last winter in Toronto, Canada:

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf told one of the most beautiful stories on love, unrequited love and shifa during the RIS Knowledge Retreat last winter in Toronto, Canada -

[www.mairperkins.co.uk/category/portfolio/illustration]

Speaking of the generosity of ‘Aisha (Rd.) -

“… she also was very generous – Bareerah was a woman that ‘Aisha (Rd.) purchased and then set free, and the famous story about Bareerah was that she was married to someone named Mugheeth. Now if two slaves were married and then the woman was freed, then she can leave/divorce her husband if she wants to because now she’s free and the husband is not, so there is no parity between them.

So Bareerah wanted to leave Mugheeth, but Mugheeth loved her.  He went into total distress, and he literally was walking behind her around Madina begging her to take him back.

Abbas (Rd.) was with the Prophet (saw) one day and they saw Bareerah and the Prophet (saw) said: “Isn’t it strange how much Mugheeth loves Bareerah and how much Bareerah dislikes Mugheeth?”

And the Ulema say when the Prophet (saw) said “Isn’t it strange”, the Arabs use the word “strange” only when the means/cause (sabaab, lit. ‘door’) of/to something is unknown – and that there is no need for something to be called “strange” if the cause is known.

So the Prophet (saw) was calling him to the point the strangeness of love.  Love is very strange.

Why do people fall in love?

Why are our hearts are attracted to some people and not other people?

Why love is sometime unrequited (un-returned)?

Because the worst type of love is unrequited love: when you love somebody and they don’t love you – there is nothing worst than that in the world, unrequited love.  And obviously the worst type of unrequited love is with God, because we want the Love of God. That’s why Abu’l-Hasan ash-Shadhili (teacher of Ibn ‘Ata’ Illah al-Iskandari ) use to say:

“Oh Allah -
make my wrong actions, the wrong actions of people whom You Love, and
don’t make my good actions, the good actions of people whom You do not Love.”

In other words – I would rather have wrong actions and be someone who You Love, than have good actions and be someone who You don’t Love.

So the Prophet (saw) went to Bareerah, who was the freed slave of ‘Aisha, and he said: “Won’t you reconsider Mugheeth?”  And she said: “are you telling me to do this, because if you are telling me to, then I have to do it.”  He (saw) replied: “I am only interceding on his behalf”.

And that’s his Shifa – ‘he finds it difficult things you find difficult’.  The Prophet (saw) saw Mugheeth suffering and he wanted to help him. That shows you his shafaaqa, even in love he wanted to help this poor man who was suffering from the loss of his love.

So when the Prophet (saw) replied that he was only interceding, Bareerah replied: “I don’t have any need for him”.  So there was something arrogant in her answer, as she was free and he was still a slave – there was something there from her nafs.

Now when Mugheeth saw that Bareerah rejected intercession from the one that even God had given intercession, Mugheeth suddenly lost all desire for her – it was just taken out of his heart.

And at that point when he lost all desire for Bareerah, suddenly she fell madly in love with him – like a punishment for rejecting the intercession of the Prophet (saw) – he did not want anything to do with her, yet she was now begging him to take her back now!”

SubhanAllah.

- Shaykh Hamza Yusuf,
RIS Knowledge Retreat 2008, Toronto, Canada

http://www.home-2009.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/homeproject

Imam Ghazali chooses the following story as the last words of his Kitab kasr al-shahwatayn (Breaking the Two Desires, Book XXIII of Imam Ghazali’s Ihya’ ‘Ulum al-Din) – perhaps for a certain wisdom relating to balance. Read on…

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“Ahmad ibn Sa’id al-Abid related that his father had told him the following:

‘There was once with us at Kufa a young man much given to devotional practices, who used to stay in the Friday mosque and hardly ever leave it.  Since he had a fine face and bearing, and a pleasant manner, he was noticed by a beautiful and intelligent woman, who fell deeply in love with him.  After having passed a long while in this condition, she stood in the road one day when he was going to the mosque.

“Young man!” she said.  ”Hear a few words which I would say to you, and then do whatever you will.”  He walked on without speaking to her.  Then she stood on the road when he was returning home, and said, ‘Young man! Hear a few words which I would say to you!’ He lowered his head for some time, and told her, “This is a situation that invites suspicion, and I do not like to be suspected.”  ”By God,” she told him, “I am not standing here because of ignorance of your disposition; God forbid that people should see me to this thing, yet I have been impelled to meet you myself; only a little of such things is considered by people to be too much, and you constant worshippers are like glass bottles which are damaged by the slightest thing.  In sum, what I would say is that all my limbs are intent upon you: God, God help me with you!”

The young man when home.  He wanted to pray, but he could not concentrate, so he took out a piece of paper instead and wrote a message.  He then went out-doors, where the woman was standing in the same place:  he threw the message towards her, and went back in.

The message ran: “In the name of God, Most Compassionate and Merciful.  You should know, O woman, that when one of God’s servants sins against Him, He deals with him leniently.  Should he sin again, He conceals for him.  But should he don its garments¹, then God conceives against him such a wrath as the very heavens and the earth could not compass, neither the mountains, the trees and the animals²: what man could then withstand such wrath?  If what you said was spoken in deceit, then I would remind you of a Day when the sky will become as molten copper, and the mountains as carded wool³, when all nations shall crouch down before the onslaught of the Almighty.  I am too weak to reform myself; how, then, may I reform others?  However, if what you say was spoken truly, I would direct you to a physician of guidance, who cures festering wounds and burning pains; to wit, God, Who is Lord of the Worlds.  So address yourself to Him with sincere entreaties, for I am distracted from you by His words (Exalted is He!): And warn them of a Day of Destruction, when hearts shall choke throats, when there will be no friend for the evildoers, neither any intercessor who will be heard. He knows the traitor of the eyes and that which the hearts conceal. God judges with verity!⁴ How may one escape this verse?”

A few days later, she came and stood in front of him again in the street. When he saw her from afar he wanted to return to his house so as not to see her.  But she said, “Young man!  Do not go back, for we shall never meet after today save in the presence of God (Exalted is He!)⁵“.

She broke into bitter tears, and said, “I ask God, in Whose hand lie the keys of your heart, to ease all your hardships.”  She then followed him, saying, “Grant me the kindness of an admonition, which I may take from you, and give me counsel by which I may act.”

“I counsel you,” he said, “to protect your soul from your soul, and would remind you of His statement (Exalted is He!): He it is who slays⁷ you at night, and knows what you commit by day⁸.  At this she lowered her head, and cried even more bitterly.  When she recovered, she went home and remained there, and occupied herself with continual worship until at last she died in grief.

After her death, the young man would weep when he recalled her. “Why do you weep?” he was asked, “when you kept her away from you?”  And he would reply, “I killed her hope for me⁹ at the outset, and through that rejection stored up a treasure with God (Exalted is He!).  And then I was ashamed to take back a treasure of this kind.”‘¹⁰

[End of Kitab kasr al-shahwatayn (Breaking the Two Desires, Book XXIII of Imam Ghazali's Ihya' 'Ulum al-Din)]

¹ That is, should he become a recidivist.
² Qur’an XXII:18
³ Qur’an LXX:8,9
⁴ Qur’an XL:18-20
⁵ On the Day of Judgement.
⁶ ‘The former “soul,” Zabidi explains (VII. 444), ‘refers to the essence [dhat], and the latter to the lower soul’.
⁷ The ‘slaying’ here refers of course to sleep.
⁸ Qur’an VI:60
⁹ ie: “my hope for her”.
¹⁰ The intended meaning is that he had felt an unlawful desire for her, and gained such grace in wrestling with it that when he too fell in love with her, he denied himself a legitimate marriage so as not to vitiate his original virtue.

- Disciplining the Soul & on Breaking the Two Desires Books XXII and XXIII of the Revival of the Religious Sciences (Ihya’ ‘Ulum al-Din)
by: Imam Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (Ra.)
Translated by: T. J. Winter (Shaykh Abdal-Hakim Murad)