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I
S THIS
L
OVE THAT
I’
M
F
EELING
?
“Love is a serious mental disease.” At least that’s how
Plato put it. And while anyone who’s ever been ‘in love’
might see some truth to this statement, there is a critical
mistake made here. Love is not a mental disease. Desire
is.
If being ‘in love’ means our lives are in pieces and we are
completely broken, miserable, utterly consumed, hardly
able to function, and willing to sacrifice everything,
chances are it’s not love. Despite what we are taught in
popular culture, true love is not supposed to make us like
drug addicts.
And so, contrary to what we’ve grown up watching in
movies, that type of all-consuming obsession is not love. It
goes by a different name. It is hawa—the word used in the
Qur’an to refer to one’s lower, vain desires and lusts.
Allah describes the people who blindly follow these
desires as those who are most astray: “But if they answer
you not, then know that they only follow their own lusts
(hawa). And who is more astray than the one who follows
his own lusts, without guidance from Allah?” (Qur’an,
28:
50
)
By choosing to submit to our hawa over the guidance of
Allah, we are choosing to worship those desires. When
our love for what we crave is stronger than our love for
Allah, we have taken that which we crave as a lord. Allah
says: “Yet there are men who take (for worship) others
besides Allah, as equal (with Allah): They love them as
they should love Allah. But those of Faith are overflowing
in their love for Allah.” (Qur’an,
2:165)
If our ‘love’ for something makes us willing to give up our
family, our dignity, our self-respect, our bodies, our
sanity, our peace of mind, our deen, and even our Lord
who created us from nothing, know that we are not ‘in
love’. We are slaves.
Of such a person Allah says: “Do you see such a one as
takes his own vain desires (hawa) as his lord? Allah has,
knowing (him as such), left him astray, and sealed his
hearing and his heart, and put a cover on his sight.
(Qur’an,
45: 23
)
Imagine the severity. To have one’s sight, hearing and
heart all sealed. Hawa is not pleasure. It is a prison. It is a
slavery of the mind, body and soul. It is an addiction and a
worship. Beautiful examples of this reality can be found
throughout literature. In Charles Dickens’ Great
Expectations, Pip exemplifies this point. In describing his
obsession with Estella, he says: “I knew to my sorrow,
often and often, if not always, that I loved her against
reason, against promise, against peace, against hope,
against happiness, against all discouragement that could
be.”
Dickens’ Miss Havisham describes this further: “I’ll tell
you…what real love is. It is blind devotion, unquestioning
self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against
yourself and against the whole world, giving up your
whole heart and soul to the smiter—as I did!”
What Miss Havisham describes here is in fact real, but it
is not real love. It is hawa. Real love, as Allah intended it,
is not a sickness or an addiction. It is affection and mercy.
Allah says in His book: “And of His signs is that He
created for you from yourselves mates that you may find
tranquility in them; and He placed between you affection
and mercy. Indeed in that are signs for a people who give
thought.” (Qur’an,
30: 21
)
Real love brings about calm—not inner torment. True love
allows you to be at peace with yourself and with God.
That is why Allah says: “that you may dwell in
tranquility.” Hawa is the opposite. Hawa will make you
miserable. And just like a drug, you will crave it always,
but never be satisfied. You will chase it to your own
detriment, but never reach it. And though you submit your
whole self to it, it will never bring you happiness.
So while ultimate happiness is everyone’s goal, it is often
difficult to see past the illusions and discern love from
hawa. One fail-safe way, is to ask yourself this question:
Does getting closer to this person that I ‘love’ bring me
closer to—or farther from—Allah? In a sense, has this
person replaced Allah in my heart?
True or pure love should never contradict or compete with
one’s love for Allah. It should strengthen it. That is why
true love is only possible within the boundaries of what
Allah has made permissible. Outside of that, it is nothing
more than hawa, to which we either submit or reject. We
are either slaves to Allah, or slaves to our hawa. It cannot
be both.
Only by struggling against false pleasure, can we attain
true pleasure. They are by definition mutually exclusive.
For that reason, the struggle against our desires is a
prerequisite for the attainment of paradise. Allah says:
“But as for he who feared the position of his Lord and
prevented the soul from [unlawful] inclination, then
indeed, Paradise will be [his] refuge.” (Qur’an,
79: 40-
41
)
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