Muslim Singlehood

Art of Love Part II

In my first posting on the Art of Love, I focused on romantic love.  This posting will extend our realm of thinking from a “valentine’s day” view of love to an everyday deep understanding and practice of love. 

What does it mean to love for your brother what you love for yourself?   Prophet Muhammad  (may Allah bless and grant him peace) said: “None of you can truly be said to believe until he wants for his brother what he wants for himself.”  Wanting for our brother what we want for ourselves removes all jealousy. It removes feelings of anger or evil.  It removes hatred. It removes murder. It removes theft.  For would we want someone to be angry or evil to US?  Would we wish OUR children to be killed?  Would we wish that OUR goods be stolen?

The bible says “And one of the scribes came and heard them arguing, and recognizing that He had answered them well, asked Him, "What commandment is the foremost of all?" Jesus (may Allah bless and grant him peace) answered, "The foremost is, 'Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' "The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." (NAS, Mark 12:28-31)

To purport to love God without loving His creation is a fallacy. We cannot truly love God until we love all of his creation.  So how do you love?  First we are to love God with our hearts, our souls, our minds, our strength.  Every ounce of our being should be devoted to getting closer to God. We get closer to God by acknowledging God in everything and everyone one.  When we speak, we speak through the lens of love and peace.  When we work, we work through love. When we act, we act through love. 

As in Part 1 of this posting series, we realize that learning to love takes effort and it takes time.  Getting back to learning and practicing the art of loving, Erich Fromm in the Art of Loving states,

“If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism. Yet most people believe that love is constituted by the object, not by the faculty. In fact, they even believe that it is proof of the intensity of their love when they do not love anybody except the "loved" person. This is the same fallacy which I have already mentioned above. Because one does not see that love is an activity, a power of the soul, one believes that all that is necessary to find is the right object - and that everything goes by itself afterward. This attitude can be compared to that of the man who wants to paint but who, instead of learning the art, claims that he just has to wait for the right object - and that he will paint beautifully when he finds it. If I truly love one person I love all persons, I love the world, I love life. If I can say to somebody else, "I love you," I must be able to say, "I love in you everybody, I love through you the world, I love in you also myself."

Begin our practice of love by Loving God, loving ourselves and loving God’s creation including all of humanity.   As Fromm states, love is a power of the soul.  Acting out of a place of love is a beneficial activity for our own sanity.  We achieve a peace of mind and a peace of heart.   Love, it’s good for us all.

By Zarinah El-Amin Naeem