Ten Steps to Allah. Step 4: Love of Allah
As we get closer to Ramadan, focusing on what we are seeking through our devotions is ever more crucial. The ultimate aim of any Muslim is to gain the closeness of Allah Most High. Shaykh Faraz Rabbani gives us clear guidelines with 10 key steps on the path to Allah Most High elucidating for us how to get closer to Allah.
The fourth step in getting closer to Allah is love for Allah. This love is a constant inclination with a heart overcome. Shaykh Faraz explains what this constant inclination refers to and how it affects and permeates our lives and relationships.
Step 4: Love of Allah
One of the most powerful meanings in our relationship with Allah is the meaning of having intense love for Allah. Allah Most High tells us in the noble Qur’an, “And those who believe are most intense in their love for Allah.” [Qur’an, 2:165]
The governing meaning in what distinguishes a believer from anyone else is not just having love for Allah but the intensity of love for Allah. Love is not just a mild feeling. Love is a constant inclination with a heart overcome. The intense love for Allah is to love Allah Himself over all else and also to love all else out of this intensity of love for Allah. You love your parents not just a little but intensely, out of your intense love for Allah. You love your teachers, your family, your friends, all for the sake of Allah because this is the creation of Allah and everything that is from the beloved is beloved to the one who loves.
A man came to Ibn Mashish and asked him for advice regarding things he could do. Ibn Mashish said that the ways of good are known, the acts of good are clear, the spiritual routines are evident. He said that if he were to give you one piece of advice, then it would be to hold fast to the love of Allah for the love of Allah is the axis around which all good revolves.
One of the supplications of our beloved Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) was: “O Allah, I ask you for Your love, and the love of those whom You love and the love of acts that will make me attain to Your love.”
May Allah grant us this true love because as Hamdoon said, “Lovers take with them all honor in this life and the next.”
The episode can be found on this link Ramadan 2020 Reminders | Episode 23: Ten Steps to Allah – 04 – Love of Allah | Shaykh Faraz Rabbani – YouTube
About the Author
Shaykh Faraz Rabbani spent ten years studying with some of the leading scholars of recent times, first in Damascus, and then in Amman, Jordan. His teachers include the foremost theologian of recent times in Damascus, the late Shaykh Adib al-Kallas (may Allah have mercy on him), as well as his student Shaykh Hassan al-Hindi, one of the leading Hanafi fuqaha of the present age.
He returned to Canada in 2007, where he founded SeekersGuidance in order to meet the urgent need to spread Islamic knowledge–both online and on the ground–in a reliable, relevant, inspiring, and accessible manner. He is the author of Absolute Essentials of Islam: Faith, Prayer, and the Path of Salvation According to the Hanafi School (White Thread Press, 2004.) Since 2011, Shaykh Faraz has been named one of the 500 most influential Muslims by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center.
