> Who are the allathīna āmanū? Allāh swt has mentioned one quality in the Qur’ān - ashaddu hubbal-lillāh (those people who are extremely intense and intensely extreme in their love for Allāh swt)!
>
> We are involved in other loves - we don’t intensely love Allāh swt, nor Nabī ﷺ, nor the believers. Allāh swt here is not describing the awliyāUllāh - He swt is describing the quality of general believers! It will become very easy to leave sin and very easy to worship when you have this intense love.
>
> Ad-dīnu yusrun - dīn is easy. Dīn has such qualities which if it came into someone, then for that person dīn will become very easy. For e.g. the one who loves money etc, the one who loves his friends, they will find it easy to stay awake for these purposes. The one who loves Allāh swt, it is very easy for them to wake up in the last part of the night! This is a system for the lovers. The foundation to everything for them is love. Of course, we all have general love for Allāh swt, but here we are talking about ashadd (extreme) love! This is a reality! In the tabi’ tābi’īn, there was a man who was a lover of someone. This love wasn’t permissible, but he had this ashadd love! He is known as majnūn (mad), because of his intense love for Layla! He would do everything Layla asked him! Our love is not like this. The sahāba kirām were true lovers. Every āyat that come down, they would follow it even whilst it was coming down. They would do ‘sami’nā wa ata’nā’ for everything. They wouldn’t think about whether it was possible for them to do it, they would just listen and act! Nothing is just made in this world without effort; if you want to be a jannatī person, then you need to mould yourself to become this person. Allāh swt has given us this project. Goal = to become a jannatī. He has given us Qur’ān and Sunnah to help us, but we don’t undertake this task, because we don’t have true love.
>
> Let’s analyse our dunyā. We live in a time where we use the term ‘quality control’. We always want the highest level of quality; we always want to pursue excellence…in everything we do! We want to enrol in the best of universities, and gain the best degree and get taught by the best of professors. We want the best job, with the best employer, with the best wage - and even when we have this, we want the best promotion. We want the best wife though we do not want to be the best husbands. We are living in the age of the upgrade. Even when we have the best, we want an upgrade. When we have the best phone, we want the best upgrade. We even want to upgrade our car, even if its just because of a new shape. We always push the horizon. There is no issue with this if done within the boundaries of Islām. KatabAllāhu ihsāna ' alā kulli shay - Allāh swt has mandated excellence in everything. Yes, we have this in dunyā, but what about our dīn? Do we ever feel today I will pray the best salāh; today, I want to do the best sajdah; today, I want to pray the best Fajr; today, I want to have the best hayā I could have etc!
>
> The parents who aren’t quality conscious in terms of dīn also force this attitude on their children. They say, ‘do not become amolvi’ - mawlawiyyun means Allāh wālā like Baghādiyyun means the one from Baghdad! So its like you’re saying to your children, do not become an Allāh wālā. They want to adopt materialism in dunyā, but when it comes to dīn, they just want to get by.
>
> Our real beloved should ONLY be Allāh swt. Majnūn didn’t have moderate love for Layla. It was intense, extremely intense.Wallathīna āmanū ashaddu hubbal-lillāh - those who people who believe, they are extremely intense and intensely extreme in their love for Allāh swt. Allāh swt has given us a heart which has the capacity to have this love! I can do anything for my beloved - this is love. Arabs have a saying, ‘al-muhibbu liman ahabba mutī’ un - the lover is obedient to his beloved. That is what you call a lover! Wallathīna āmanū ashaddu hubbal-lillāh! It’s that person who wants to learn Qur’ān; that person who just wants to do ‘amal on more things. They just want to know more, so they can act upon more.
>
> Love is that area where there is always room for improvement. Why? Because the lover always wants to be more beloved to their beloved! There is no limit to love. Give love, take love. Whoever wants to me more beloved, they love more. What is Laylā and Majnūn?! The real love story is between Allāh swt and His servant! The word ‘ishq is from hadīth. ‘Ishq means EXTREME love! You can only use this term when describing your love for Allāh and Rasūlullāh ﷺ. You can ONLY be an ‘āshiq of Allāh and Rasūlullāh ﷺ. ‘Ishq is that intense extreme love. The believers should be like this.
>
> What is success? When the lover becomes a beloved of their beloved. When the lover becomes the beloved - that is the success of love! The more you love, the more you worship, the more you do khidmah, the more you improve your character, the more you do! This love doesn’t ever plateau; it is always increasing! It increases forever - this is nafs mutmainnah. It is making your love so intense that it is always increasing. This is when Allāh swt says, yā ayyatuhan-nafsul mutmainna, irj’ī ilā rabbiki rādiyatam-mardiyya - O’ nafs mutmainnah, return back to Your Rabb, well pleased and pleasing unto Him! The love has increased so much that now Allāh swt says, come to Me! You are happy with Your Rabb, and I am happy with You! Now you will live forever in Jannah - here you will love Allāh forever, and Allāh will love you forever. If Allāh created us so we can love Him and He can love us forever, then why not spend these 50-60 years just loving Him? The pleasure of love is in loving only Allāh. If you share your heart with other idols, you will never find pleasure loving Allāh. The pleasure of love is in tawhīd. When your beloved is only ONE! Tawhīd doesn’t mean just believing in one Allāh; it means to use your one heart in this one dunyā only for the One and Only Allāh!
>
> The biggest obstruction to gaining this love is when you love someone else. This is when the love of Allāh swt will be removed from your heart. When you have another impermissible love, this will be a major obstruction for you. The love for Allāh swtdoes not accept roommates in your heart.
>
> What is impermissible love?
>
> 1. Loving ghayr-mahram! Loving that creation which Allāh forbade upon you to love. This illness has become so general now. I have spent almost 22 years in this and I can tell you that the number one cause for spiritual heart failure is this love. Before, it was a problem within the youth. Now, it is a problem amongst our elders too. Once I was travelling and there was a man in his 70s, and he told me with a lot of pain that he wanted to talk. I gave him some time and he told me that he is in love with some ghayr-mahram like a 19 year old boy would tell me. I was shivering inside and I was seeking protection for myself and making du’ā for him too. He beard was white - he was talking to me like he was a 20 year old university boy. When a youth talks to me, I reply to them instantly, but i was dumbfounded at this point. I couldn’t speak. He didn’t say I’ve fallen in love with a woman; he was falling in love with women! You cannot have intense extreme love for Allāh swt whilst loving ghayr mahram!
>
> Our hayā has decreased now and we don’t find it bad. Wearing hijāb and wearing short sleeve has become normal - you may not even have bad intentions, but we’ve been subject to so much of the western life that we find it normal! The love for Allāh swt is finished when we love ghayr mahram. They say they even remember the ghayr mahram in their salāh - we should cry about this! Despite trying to forget, they still remember. They are praying about the greatness of Allāh swt, and still remember someone else. One thing is to forget Allāh swt in salāh, but to think about ghayr mahram in salāh - how bad is this!? Never think loving ghayr mahram is permissible. Don’t ever think it is okay to unlawfully love someone just because Allāh swt will forgive me. If you don’t have an intention to LEAVE this love, what makes you think Allāh swt will forgive you? Leave this love for ghayr mahram! You choose either Allāh swt or ghayr-mahram; we can’t love both. It’s not possible. Your own heart will tell you whether you have this love.
>
> 2. Love for wealth - hubbub-dunyā ra’su kullu katī’ah (the love for the dunyā is the root to all sins). People have broken family relationships due to greed for dunyā. Some people say they don’t have this love; I will give you a take-home test to test on yourself (not on others). If someone brought a new car, or someone brought a new property and they made lots of profit on it, and they said they brought it for a cheap price 5 years ago - you would be so sad that they didn't bother to tell you to buy too. You would be so upset, you would tell your family. They would say that you should have invested like this too - you would get even more upset. If someone was to tell you that I was in some big trouble, and I supplicated to Allāh swt and He swt accepted it. I now know the secret to du’ās - 5 years ago, I went to a bayān and I heard Allāh swt announces ‘hal min sā’il, ūtiyalahu; hal min mustaghfir?| that is there anyone who asks so I can give to them, is there anyone seeking forgiveness so that I can forgive them so for 5 years, I have been making du’ā at this time. Now you will not have that same sadness that you had when you missed out on investing 5 years ago!
>
> Nabī ﷺ has said that paradise will be a place of happiness, except the believers will only have one regret. What is that? It is that time in the dunyā they spent in ghaflat! They would wish that they prayed one extra subhānAllāh, one extra istighfār. They would regret the extra sleep they had. Jannah is a place of no regret, except just this! You can make du’ā now that all the time Ispent in the dunyā in ghaflat, yā Allāh, change it into dhikr. In the Qur’ān, Allāh has said He can change our bad deeds to good deeds through real repentance, so He swt can also change our ghaflat to dhikr!
>
> When a father spends so much on his son for his education, and even then he achieves low, he would be so upset and would have so much regret. We are low achievers in dīn! We should also have this regret! When we don’t realise our potential in dīn, we will be low achievers forever in the hereafter too. Let me give you an example - there was a waliUllāh (in different narrations, different names are mentioned), and in one narration it was mentioned it was Shaykh Abdul Qādir Jilani. One day he was sat when he got the news that his ship with all his trade goods had sunk. He looked down, said alhamdulillāh and smiled. A few days later, he got the news that it wasn’t his ship that sunk, but it was someone else’s. He again looked down, analysed his heart, said alhamdulillāh and smiled, so one of his students asked why his reaction was the same to which he said both times, I looked at and analysed my heart to see if it was affected by the dunyā - and as I wasn’t affected in the slightest, I praised Allāh! This is what you call zuhd. Zuhd just means to not love the dunyā - it means you can live in thedunyā, accomplish in the dunyā, strive in the dunyā, gain excellence in the dunyā but NEVER to love the dunyā!
>
> 3. Loving yourself - vanity and conceit! To think of yourself as something. To forget to thank and praise Allāh swt. 'Ujub is loving yourself more, kibr is thinking you're better than people and takabbur is acting upon this! Iblīs was arrogant, he had pride. He was a great ‘ābid, ‘ālim and ‘ārif, but he thought of himself as better than Ādam (as), hence didnt prostrate. The more you have, the more you’re in danger of ‘ujub. In higher educated people, they have a higher risk of ‘ujub, Higher income people = higher risk of ‘ujub. The highest risk of ‘ujub is in them people who are the highest in education, income etc.
>
> Some people have all these three types of love! Imagine I took you to visit an ill person, and on the way you ask me what illness they have. I tell you on the way they have TB, jaundice, hepatitis A,B and C; they have liver cancer, lung cancer, leukaemia, they are also handicapped and paralysed and they have had a stroke - you will feel so much sadness and will feel so much sympathy for that person. Now, what if I told you, let’s go meet a spiritually ill person - they get angry a lot, they have jealousy, love for dunyā, hatred, they have pride. They have done so much tawbah (imagine, a heart bypass ten times), yet they still aren’t cured! They are so ill. Imām Ghazāli rah said that the spiritually ill don’t even think they are ill.
>
> When you don’t safeguard your gaze - what do you get? You only get a 1 sec glance - you can’t even speak to them etc and even then we cannot protect our gaze. We have very light love for Allāh swt. We need to bring extreme love for Allāh swt in our heart.
>
> It is very easy for a person to love Allāh swt because it is a NATURAL thing. We all have the capacity to love. Allāh swt gathered all the souls and asked them ‘alastu birabbikum - am i not Your Rabb?’ - every soul (both believers and disbelievers) said ‘balā - yes’ - then Allāh swt planted the seed of love into all of us.
>
> InnaAllāha jamīlun, yuhibbul jamāl - Allāh swt is Beautiful and loves beauty! Can you imagine the beauty of that Being who created beauty itself? So why would you love someone else? When you meet someone who says I have become your guardian and I will do everything for you - if a powerful person said this to you, we would become so happy. Imagine...Allāh swt has said in Qur’ān ‘Allāhu walliyullathīna āmanū - Allāh swt is guardian/friend of the believers’ - when will we adopt thishappiness? Allāhu walliyullathīna āmanū, yukhrijuhum minaz-zulumāti ilan-nūr – Allāh swt dropped the second condition of doing good deeds! He will take any ordinary believer out of their darkness. This should make you happy and joyful.
>
> Woh muhabbat nahi jis ka izhār nahi; woh muhabbat nahi jis ka shiddat nahi- that love is not a love which is not expressed; that love is a not a love which doesn’t have intensity.
>
> Allāh swt is so loyal to us, yet we are such disloyal servants. We have such a sincere religion, yet we are such insincere servants. We have such a good Nabī, yet we are such bad servants.
>
> How can we attain this love? One way was to rid yourself of other loves. Allāh swt has said yuhhibuhum wa yuhhibūnahu - He loves them and they love him. He expressed His love first! First you become a lover, then you become a beloved. This is the easiest way to love! We should accept this love from Allāh swt. We should be grateful for every blessing. Allāh swt has done so much for us, yet we don’t feel we are His beloveds. Every day you should feel grateful for something new! This is how you will develop a feeling of shukr. You should feel Allāh swt is the muhsin haqīqī. Another way to increase love is to leave sin and to adopt good deeds. This hypocrisy we have makes it hard to love. We can’t be disobedient to someone and claim to love them at the same time.
>
> Another way to increase love is to remember Allāh swt - the more you remember Allāh swt outside salāh, the more you remember Him inside salāh. The more you remember Him, the more you will love Him - dhikr and love are proportional to each other. There are those who remember Allāh swt abundantly - they are mentioned in Qur’ān as dhākirīn, and the ones who are not from this category are given the command to remember Allāh swt abundantly. We need to learn dhikr from those who are already dhākir! This is called suhbat - yā ayyuhallathīna āmanū, ittaqullĀha wa kunū ma’as sādiqīn - O’ people who believer, fear Allāh and be with those who are true- be WITH them, be like them. Allāh swt says ‘kun, fayakūn - be and it becomes’ - similarly, be with them. Who are the sādiqīn? Those who truly love Allāh swt more than me. For Mawlāna Rumī, sādiqīn would be Shams Tabrezi. For general believers like us, it is those who have more love, dhikr and sunnah than us.
>
> Nabī ﷺ made a beautiful du’ā to teach us the importance of being with those who are truer than us. Allāhumma innī as' alukahubbaka, wa hubba man yuhibbuka, wal-'amalalladhī yuballighunī hubbak - O’ Allāh swt, I ask You for Your Love, AND the love of those who love You, and those deeds which will cause me to attain Your Love.
>
> Tawbah and irādah - one is general tawbah, and one is a special tawbah for them sins that I didn’t even think of sin as before. What sin is this? That I didnt love Allāh swt as much as I should have. We should have talab, a true desire and yearning that Allāh swt, I also become your lover. When you do tawbah as a group, even if one person does true tawbah, the barakah from that one person can mean everyone will be forgiven! This is the barakah of a gathering. We should all make an intention to be that one person.
> We are involved in other loves - we don’t intensely love Allāh swt, nor Nabī ﷺ, nor the believers. Allāh swt here is not describing the awliyāUllāh - He swt is describing the quality of general believers! It will become very easy to leave sin and very easy to worship when you have this intense love.
>
> Ad-dīnu yusrun - dīn is easy. Dīn has such qualities which if it came into someone, then for that person dīn will become very easy. For e.g. the one who loves money etc, the one who loves his friends, they will find it easy to stay awake for these purposes. The one who loves Allāh swt, it is very easy for them to wake up in the last part of the night! This is a system for the lovers. The foundation to everything for them is love. Of course, we all have general love for Allāh swt, but here we are talking about ashadd (extreme) love! This is a reality! In the tabi’ tābi’īn, there was a man who was a lover of someone. This love wasn’t permissible, but he had this ashadd love! He is known as majnūn (mad), because of his intense love for Layla! He would do everything Layla asked him! Our love is not like this. The sahāba kirām were true lovers. Every āyat that come down, they would follow it even whilst it was coming down. They would do ‘sami’nā wa ata’nā’ for everything. They wouldn’t think about whether it was possible for them to do it, they would just listen and act! Nothing is just made in this world without effort; if you want to be a jannatī person, then you need to mould yourself to become this person. Allāh swt has given us this project. Goal = to become a jannatī. He has given us Qur’ān and Sunnah to help us, but we don’t undertake this task, because we don’t have true love.
>
> Let’s analyse our dunyā. We live in a time where we use the term ‘quality control’. We always want the highest level of quality; we always want to pursue excellence…in everything we do! We want to enrol in the best of universities, and gain the best degree and get taught by the best of professors. We want the best job, with the best employer, with the best wage - and even when we have this, we want the best promotion. We want the best wife though we do not want to be the best husbands. We are living in the age of the upgrade. Even when we have the best, we want an upgrade. When we have the best phone, we want the best upgrade. We even want to upgrade our car, even if its just because of a new shape. We always push the horizon. There is no issue with this if done within the boundaries of Islām. KatabAllāhu ihsāna '
>
> The parents who aren’t quality conscious in terms of dīn also force this attitude on their children. They say, ‘do not become amolvi’ - mawlawiyyun means Allāh wālā like Baghādiyyun means the one from Baghdad! So its like you’re saying to your children, do not become an Allāh wālā. They want to adopt materialism in dunyā, but when it comes to dīn, they just want to get by.
>
> Our real beloved should ONLY be Allāh swt. Majnūn didn’t have moderate love for Layla. It was intense, extremely intense.Wallathīna āmanū
>
> Love is that area where there is always room for improvement. Why? Because the lover always wants to be more beloved to their beloved! There is no limit to love. Give love, take love. Whoever wants to me more beloved, they love more. What is Laylā and Majnūn?! The real love story
>
> What is success? When the lover becomes a beloved of their beloved. When the lover becomes the beloved - that is the success of love! The more you love, the more you worship, the more you do khidmah, the more you improve your character, the more you do! This love doesn’t ever plateau; it is always increasing! It increases forever - this is nafs mutmainnah. It is making your love so intense that it is always increasing. This is when Allāh swt says, yā ayyatuhan-nafsul mutmainna, irj’ī ilā rabbiki rādiyatam-mardiyya - O’ nafs mutmainnah, return back to Your Rabb, well pleased and pleasing unto Him! The love has increased so much that now Allāh swt says, come to Me! You are happy with Your Rabb, and I am happy with You! Now you will live forever in Jannah - here you will love Allāh forever, and Allāh will love you forever. If Allāh created us so we can love Him and He can love us forever, then why not spend these 50-60 years just loving Him? The pleasure of love is in loving only Allāh. If you share your heart with other idols, you will never find pleasure loving Allāh. The pleasure of love is in tawhīd. When your beloved is only ONE! Tawhīd doesn’t mean just believing in one Allāh; it means to use your one heart in this one dunyā only for the One and Only Allāh!
>
> The biggest obstruction to gaining this love is when you love someone else. This is when the love of Allāh swt will be removed from your heart. When you have another impermissible love, this will be a major obstruction for you. The love for Allāh
>
> What is impermissible love?
>
> 1. Loving ghayr-mahram! Loving that creation which Allāh forbade upon you to love. This illness has become so general now. I have spent almost 22 years in this and I can tell you that the number one cause for spiritual heart failure is this love. Before, it was a problem within the youth. Now, it is a problem amongst our elders too. Once I was travelling and there was a man in his 70s, and he told me with a lot of pain that he wanted to talk. I gave him some time and he told me that he is in love with some ghayr-mahram like a 19 year old boy would tell me. I was shivering inside and I was seeking protection for myself and making du’ā for him too. He beard was white - he was talking to me like he was a 20 year old university boy. When a youth talks to me, I reply to them instantly, but i was dumbfounded at this point. I couldn’t speak. He didn’t say I’ve fallen in love with a woman; he was falling in love with women! You cannot have intense extreme love for Allāh swt whilst loving ghayr mahram!
>
> Our hayā has decreased now and we don’t find it bad. Wearing hijāb and wearing short sleeve has become normal - you may not even have bad intentions, but we’ve been subject to so much of the western life that we find it normal! The love for Allāh swt is finished when we love ghayr mahram. They say they even remember the ghayr mahram in their salāh - we should cry about this! Despite trying to forget, they still remember. They are praying about the greatness of Allāh swt, and still remember someone else. One thing is to forget Allāh swt in salāh, but to think about ghayr mahram in salāh - how bad is this!? Never think loving ghayr mahram is permissible. Don’t ever think it is okay to unlawfully love someone just because Allāh swt will forgive me. If you don’t have an intention to LEAVE this love, what makes you think Allāh swt will forgive you? Leave this love for ghayr mahram! You choose either Allāh swt or ghayr-mahram; we can’t love both. It’s not possible. Your own heart will tell you whether you have this love.
>
> 2. Love for wealth - hubbub-dunyā ra’su kullu
>
> Nabī ﷺ has said that paradise will be a place of happiness, except the believers will only have one regret. What is that? It is that time in the dunyā they spent in ghaflat! They would wish that they prayed one extra subhānAllāh, one extra istighfār. They would regret the extra sleep they had. Jannah is a place of no regret, except just this! You can make du’ā now
>
> When a father spends so much on his son for his education, and even then he achieves low, he would be so upset and would have so much regret. We are low achievers
>
> 3. Loving yourself - vanity and conceit! To think of yourself as something. To forget to thank and praise Allāh swt. 'Ujub is loving yourself more, kibr is thinking you're better than people and takabbur is acting upon this! Iblīs was arrogant, he had pride. He was a great ‘ābid, ‘ālim and ‘ārif, but he thought of himself as better than Ādam (as), hence didnt prostrate. The more you have, the more you’re in danger of ‘ujub. In higher educated people, they have a higher risk of ‘ujub, Higher income people = higher risk of ‘ujub. The highest risk of ‘ujub is in them people who are the highest in education, income etc.
>
> Some people have all these three types of love! Imagine I took you to visit an ill person, and on the way you ask me what illness they have. I tell you on the way they have TB, jaundice, hepatitis A,B and C; they have liver cancer, lung cancer, leukaemia, they are also handicapped and paralysed and they have had a stroke - you will feel so much sadness and will feel so much sympathy for that person. Now, what if I told you, let’s go meet a spiritually ill person - they get angry a lot, they have jealousy, love for dunyā, hatred, they have pride. They have done so much tawbah (imagine, a heart bypass ten times), yet they still aren’t cured! They are so ill. Imām Ghazāli rah said that the spiritually ill don’t even think they are ill.
>
> When you don’t safeguard your gaze - what do you get? You only get a 1 sec glance - you can’t even speak to them etc and even then we cannot protect our gaze. We have very light love for Allāh swt. We need to bring extreme love for Allāh swt in our heart.
>
> It is very easy for a person to love Allāh swt because it is a NATURAL thing. We all have the capacity to love. Allāh swt gathered all the souls and asked them ‘alastu birabbikum - am i not Your Rabb?’ - every soul (both believers and disbelievers) said ‘balā - yes’ - then Allāh swt planted the seed of love into all of us.
>
> InnaAllāha jamīlun, yuhibbul
>
> Woh muhabbat nahi jis ka
>
> Allāh swt is so loyal to us, yet we are such disloyal servants. We have such a sincere religion, yet we are such insincere servants. We have such a good Nabī, yet we are such bad servants.
>
> How can we attain this love? One way was to rid yourself of other loves. Allāh swt has said yuhhibuhum wa
>
> Another way to increase love is to remember Allāh swt - the more you remember Allāh swt outside salāh, the more you remember Him inside salāh. The more you remember Him, the more you will love Him - dhikr and love are proportional to each other. There are those who remember Allāh swt abundantly - they are mentioned in Qur’ān as dhākirīn, and the ones who are not from this category are given the command to remember Allāh swt abundantly. We need to learn dhikr from those who are already dhākir! This is called suhbat - yā
>
> Nabī ﷺ made a beautiful du’ā to teach us the importance of being with those who are truer than us. Allāhumma innī as'
>
> Tawbah and irādah - one is general tawbah, and one is a special tawbah for them sins that I didn’t even think of sin as before. What sin is this? That I didnt love Allāh swt as much as I should have. We should have talab, a true desire and yearning that Allāh swt, I also become your lover. When you do tawbah as a group, even if one person does true tawbah, the barakah from that one person can mean everyone will be forgiven! This is the barakah of a gathering. We should all make an intention to be that one person.