How should love for the Prophet be?
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✍🏻Gul Raza Rahi Arariavi
Love is the name of the heart's inclination and it can be for anyone, based on any quality. It is an involuntary attribute. If there is any quality in someone, then nature immediately demands attraction towards it, and then love happens.
Generally, three types of love are described:
(1) Natural Love (2) Rational Love (3) Faith-based Love
But if observed carefully, the first two types are not independent types, but rather branches of faith found within it.
Natural Love:
Like the love a person has for their parents, family, and relatives, because living together and due to affection, love, kindness, and respect, this love happens. There is no need for any special attention in this.
Rational Love:
If there is any quality or attribute in someone that makes a person inclined towards them, then this is called rational love, just as a person loves another person based on some favor or quality, due to competence, skill, and expertise.
Faith-based Love:
This is the love on which a person's belief is based, and according to their belief, they love all things related to their religion. In their light, they love a person and their attributes.
As far as a believer is concerned, their focus and center is faith.
All their demands are based on faith.
Faith determines who you should love and who you should hate.
And all types of love fall within the circle of this faith. This is what is expressed in the hadith as love for the sake of Allah and hatred for the sake of Allah. Faith demands that in a conscious state, the real deserving of your love is the real creator, Allah Almighty, on whom the beginning and end of man depends. After that, love those whom Allah Almighty demands to be loved, especially the Prophets, and in particular the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him (who introduces you to my essence). Love him. Then love those whom the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, commands to be loved, i.e., the Companions and other commands of Islam. This is called faith-based love. The believer loves according to this order. Whoever chooses other than a believer will certainly not be on the right path.
Uloom Anwari Pasban-o-Amin Sahib Maarif-us-Sunan Hazrat Allama Yusuf Banuri (may Allah have mercy on him) says!
The hadith that says you cannot be a complete believer until I am more beloved to you than your parents, children, and all people
This refers to the love that begins rationally and ends naturally.
This is the method of love that the Companions adopted.
Hazrat Abu Bakr Siddiq, Hazrat Umar, Hazrat Usman, Hazrat Ali, and other Companions (may Allah be pleased with them all) gave preference to the Messenger of Allah and his demands over their parents, family, and relatives.
They fulfilled the demands of the Messenger of Allah, leaving aside the demands of their families.
For this, they sacrificed their lives, wealth, homes, and everything.
Some Companions did not hesitate to put to the sword even those relatives who opposed Islam. Some Companions did not spare their real brothers and fathers in the battlefield.
Hazrat Sumayya, Hazrat Yasir, Hazrat Ammar, Hazrat Bilal, Hazrat Salman Farsi, Hazrat Khubaib, Hazrat Hamza, Hazrat Mus'ab bin Umair (may Allah be pleased with them all) and other devotees of Islam who made sacrifices for Islam that are beyond our imagination.
Most of these Companions sacrificed their lives solely for the love of the Messenger of Allah.
Today, we also claim to love the Messenger, and we do, but it is limited to belief and words.
When it comes to fulfilling its demands, we are seen in the last row.
The demands of this love are to live life in the light of the best example and to sacrifice our sacred souls for the sake of Islam, to abandon self-worship and adopt the Sunnah. Our lives are devoid and empty of this.
The love for the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, should be such that we become the embodiment of "Take what the Messenger gives you, and refrain from what he forbids you."
Because of this, we will get the love of the real creator.
As it is in Surah "Al-Imran":
Say, [O Muhammad], "If you should love Allah , then follow me, [so] Allah will love you and forgive you your sins. And Allah is Forgiving and Merciful."
Say, "If you love Allah, then follow me, Allah will love you and forgive you your sins."
Now we should examine our faith, what is the standard and path of my faith?
Can we fulfill all these demands?
If yes, then understand that you are a true believer, otherwise our faith is rapidly moving towards the swamp of decline, where there is a home of disbelief and polytheism, apostasy and atheism, innovation and misguidance, ignorance and ugliness, and abomination and depravity.
May Allah Almighty grant us all the ability to fulfill the demands of faith-based love to the fullest extent.
Amen, then Amen.