Loving and Hating in Allah

Shaykh al-Islam Ahmad ibn al-Mubarak al-Lamati says, that his shaykh sayyidi Abd al-Aziz ad-Dabbagh, rahimahullah, said that Tawba, or Repentance, will not come down upon a believer unless he loves all believers equally.

(see: riyada.hadithuna.com/descen-tawba/ for details)

Shaykh Al-Lamati says:

Then I asked the Shaykh- God be pleased with him: “If this man loves all believers without distinction, where is love in God and hate in God, which is one of the branches of the faith? Indeed, the sinner deserves to be hated in God. For if we loved him in God, we’d be contravening what his disobedience requires.”

He replied- God be pleased with Him:

“With regard to the sinner, one must direct one’s hate against his actions, not against his believing body, his pure heart, and his constant faith. The things which impose love of him are “necessary”, whereas the sins which impose hate for him are “accidental and contingent”. Love of him resides in our hearts and hate, in his case, is directed toward accidental things.

Thus we may represent his sins before our eyes and in our thoughts as stones tied to his clothes on the outside of his body. We love his person but we hate the stones tied to his clothes. This is the amount which the Lawgiver ordered with regard to hating the sinner and not more than this. Most people don’t distinguish between hating the actions outside the body and hating the body. They want to hate the actions but don’t know how to hate them, and so they fall into hating the body….

For the believer who sins, we haven’t been ordered to hate him with a hate that extinguishes:

- love of his person, and

- love of his faith in God the Sublime, and

- love of his faith in God’s Apostle- God’s blessings and peace be upon him-, and

- love of his faith in all the apostles, and love of his faith in all the prophets- peace be upon them-, and

- love of his faith in all the celestial books, and

- love of his faith in the Final Day and everything it contains of gathering and resurrection, Paradise and Hell, the Siraat and the scales, and

- love of his faith in all the angels- blessings and peace be upon them-, and

- love of his faith in divine foreordaining, the good and the bad of it.

So in this way we love him for every praiseworthy characteristic in him. If our love of him has occurred in advance because of these praiseworthy qualities, it isn’t possible that hate for him will ever enter our hearts. Rather we hate his actions and we invoke blessings upon him, especially if we’ve looked at him with the eye of reality.

If they want to hate the sinner, most people firstly turn to him in hate- before anything else- and they ignore the qualities which cause love of him. They don’t visualize these in their minds and so hate settles in their hearts. This hate then spreads to his person and the person becomes something hateful in their view. Now this isn’t permissible and allowed. But God the Sublime knows best!”

- Pure Gold from the Words of Sayyidi Abd al-Aziz ad-Dabbagh. Translated by John O’Kane and Bernd Radtke. Pg 560-1, with some changes.

والحمد لله رب العالمين على نعمه كلها

اللهم صلّ وسلم وبارك على سيدنا ومولانا محمد خير البرية

وعلى آله في كل لمحة ونفس عدد ما وسعه علم الله