Superficial Love

Should we love passionately?

Passion is defined as a strong and barely controllable type of emotion. Pairing this emotion with love makes it so much more intense, a compelling enthusiasm and desire. This isn’t to say we should be numb towards people and things we love, for example, I love Psychology and I’m totally 100% passionate about raising awareness for mental health – and I’m sure like most of you, I love my parents, family, friends and of course my cat. I am passionate in some things towards them, for example I feel very strongly about my parents, and the things I would do to look after and protect them sometimes feel beyond my control.

When they cry, my heart cries, when they hurt, my mind hurts, but the underlying reason for this is because I love them and act passionately for them, for the sake of Allah. Even if we shift this to our focus of the month, relationships between men and women, the same concept still applies. No doubt the passion is intensified in a different way, as when 2 people are tied by a marital bond, 2 bodies become one, and 2 souls become intertwined. A husband and wife will have a strong desire to look after one another, provide for each other, and be the best of companions in every single way.

Loving passionately is natural. Our relationship with Allah is the most fundamental for our daily functioning and akhira, but when passionate love gets in between us and Allah is when this love turns into lust. Lust is “a strong sexual desire” – the definition itself should ring alarm bells. Lust is of course acceptable only in a marriage, because experiencing this feeling towards someone outside of marriage is literally a recipe for disaster. As discussed previously, marriage is for the sake of Allah – so when a relationship before marriage occurs, you have already committed yourself to something for the sake of worldly pleasures. When lust becomes a part of the equation, then the attachment to this world only becomes stronger.

Becoming attached to the dimensions of this life and this world, becoming obsessed with achieving happiness and pleasure from this life and this world, and acting for the sake of this life and this world – will bring nothing but a short lived burst of satisfaction. It takes our eyes off the straight path of Islam, it pre-occupies our mind with matters other than the akhira and it seals our hearts to a point where Jannah and the love of Allah is no longer desired, rather the love and “paradise” of this world and its people are sought. To fulfil this lust, the purpose of this life is slowly subconsciously forgotten about – when in reality, our only non-lustful and ultimate desire which we should live and breathe for, is the day we get to see the face of Allah. Unlike this life, this world and everything encased within, Allah, Islam and Jannah are not temporal in nature, nor are they promised to disappoint – and most certainly not destined to bring punishment and grief.

We cannot lose ourselves to a life that is nothing compared to the scale and fruits of Jannah, where we can have whatever we want, love whoever we want, and be how we want. We cannot degrade ourselves to a status that is pathetic and low compared to the status we will have amongst the angels for fighting our nafs. We cannot lustfully love anyone for the sake of this world, this life and its pleasures, simply because it doesn’t even come close, it is beyond our imagination what Allah has promised.

How can we possibly compromise the next life for a lust that is superficial? A lust which appears to be real and true until examined more closely, until it is revealed that the lust you hold so closely can vanish within moments.