Building relationships of love. Islam teaches us to love and care for everyone around us because this develops our faith. The difference between love and infatuation. Tough love and so much more….
With the name of Allah,the Most Gracious, the ever Merciful.
Loving the people around us is a very important aspect of Islam so much so that it is linked to having ‘Imaan’ (faith). The Holy Prophet (SAW) said:
“By him in whose hand my soul is, you will not enter paradise until you believe, and you will not believe until you love one another. Should I not guide you to that which will cause you to love one another: Spread out salutation amongst you.” Abu Dawud 5174.
Love is not only about a man/woman relationship but there are many more relationships of love that we can have such as with our children, our parents, our aunts and uncles, our friends and our neighbors.
These ways of loving is also very important. The Holy Prophet (SAW) and the Aulia Allah teach us to care and feel for others and to strive for the betterment of all. When we care for others, then only will we be able to find and build relationships of love.
Spending our resources on others is far more important than building an empire because loving the people around us ultimately leads to loving Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala.
Let’s see how… The Holy Prophet (SAW) states that on the day of Judgment Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala will ask someone: When I was hungry why did you not feed me and when the person says: when did this happen?, then Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala will remind him of the time when a poor person asked him for food and he refused.
Then Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala will ask someone: when I had no clothes you did not cloth Me, and the person will ask: when did this happen?, and Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala will remind him of the time when a person asked him for clothing and he did not cloth him.
Can you see that by feeding and clothing people we are serving Allah. If service to humanity is service to Allah then loving others for the sake of Allah amounts to loving Him.
We must therefore try our utmost to build relationships of love with our parents, spouses, children, other family members, neighbors and most importantly our Pir O Murshid (Spiritual Guid)and in this way we are sowing the seeds to finally grow to love Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala.
We can start off by greeting, smiling and being good to everyone. The Holy Prophet (SAW) said:
“No servant loves a servant of Allah except that by doing this he honors his Glorious and Almighty Lord.” He said that on the Day of Judgment the prophets and the martyrs will envy the rank of the lovers who love for the sake of Allah. Al Hadis: section on love.
Growing to love someone is not the easiest of things – on the contrary it is one of the most challenging tasks we face in life. In one of Nusrath’s songs he describes it as “Ye ishk nahie aahsaan, Eek aag kie darya hae aur doob kie jaane hae.” Translation: (Love is not easy, it is a like a sea of fire through which you have to drown in and get burnt)
Saying ‘I love you’ with flowers, giving a big hug, remembering to say happy birthday, walking in an intoxicated state with our heads in the clouds; this is not true love; these are just superficial gestures glorified in most movies and to understand love we need to understand infatuation.
Infatuation is a false feeling of love because it is about being attracted to superficial physical looks while true love is about being attracted to what is inside a person (such as their character).
Infatuation is deceptive because it is about appearances while love is about reality. Infatuation is quick and easy, sometimes instant, while love is hard work, lots and lots of sacrifices and it takes time.
Infatuation stems from our baser desires while love stems from our heart and Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala. Love is permanent while infatuation is short term.
Infatuation is about trying to get from others while love is about giving without any intention of getting anything in return.
In short if we want to have relationships of love with our parents, spouse, children and our Pir O Murshid then it means that we have to work really hard towards this and go through all sorts of trials.
To experience love we therefore must become people that are prepared to give and sacrifice our needs and comforts for others. This is how our Holy Prophet Muhammad (SAW) lived his life – sacrificing for others.
Allowing ourselves to be infatuated with someone is not the best of situations because then we tend to give in to the persons every wimp and fancy even if it is wrong.
This is the problem with long periods of courting before getting married. In courting we are not seeing the complete character and personality of the person because we are only seeing them for short periods and certain periods only.
The Holy Prophet (SAW) has said that just as we should not delay in burying our deceased we should not delay a marriage when our daughters are proposed.
The worst thing about infatuation is that it actually prevents us from true love and in results in all sorts of long term problems that we would only experience in the latter years of our lives.
A safe attitude to adopt is one where we place our trust in Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala and do everything for His sake, even when it comes to our relationships.
The first step to love is to develop a good, pleasing yet firm, character as displayed by our Holy Prophet (SAW) and the Aulia Allah.
Honesty, integrity, commitment, caring, feeling for others, understanding the situation of others, truth, patience, justice… these are all good qualities which we have to imbibe into our personalities and way of life so that we could build relationships of love.
Let’s put it another way; who would love a lying, cheating, arrogant, lazy person.
In relationships we have to be careful of conjecture because more often than not we would be jumping to the wrong conclusions.
If someone gives us a present, we must appreciate the thought behind it and not be offended by how little the present is. The Holy Prophet (SAW) encouraged the giving and receiving of gifts even if it be the hooves of a sheep.
Avoid suspicion because this is baseless and leads to animosity. Always try to think good and positive about what people do or if we want, clarify things by talking about it and we would be surprised that at most times the person has good intentions.
To be firm we have to promote what is good and to stop what is wrong – tough love. This entails not giving in to our children’s whims and fancies.
As a father of a daughter our child is sooner or later going to come to us with tears in her eyes because of some problem she is having with her husband. In such a situation we just cannot pick her up from her maritial home. We do not have the right to do this because her husband now has more rights over her than we do.
Divorce to our daughter is in her husband’s hands only and not in ours. We must be able to put a lid over our feelings , take a few moments to ponder about it and to Ask Allah subhanu wata ala to help us and guide us.
At most times it is a trivial issue and if we guide her right all will be well but if we blindly take her side we could end up breaking her marriage. Parental upbringing plays a major role in how our childrn fare with others.
We must never take our children’s part but always ask them, what they did to make the other person react in that way. A father’s role is most important in this because we are able to control our emotions a little better than our wives.
As fathers we have to ensure that our children dress well and they behave in a respectable way. As parents we proudly and quickly take credit for our children’s achieviement but we fail to take responsibility for their shortcommings.
It is not uncommon to see that some children hang up “No entry” signs on their bedroom doors. Ponder; what does this mean and where did we learn this from?
Our founder’s son, Hazrath Hakim Aijaaz Ali Shah (RA) said: There are two times that you need to take hold of your child’s hand, once when they are toddlers and the other, more important time, when they are in their late teens and early adulthood. At the second time, the young adult is ready to explore and to make decisions that would affect the rest of his\her life.
We need to be a part of their lives at this time and not be shut out so that we could guide and help them. We need to be gentle in the way we handle this and we must do this by befriending them and not just dictating to them. Focus them towards an Islamic way of life. Teach them to ponder about life and to pray, not ritualistically but with the understanding and the knowledge that we are seeking guidance from Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala.
We need to stress that an Islamic way of life does not only bring success in the hereafter but it brings success in this life as well.
To do all of this, we too, need to be constantly learning and reading up about Islam. We need to know about how practical and beneficial an Islamic way of life is.
When we help our children to make good decisions then they would learn to appreciate and love people.
A husband, being the head of a household also needs to practice tough love, not only towards his children but also his wife. Here again the man of the house needs to do it gently, wisely and justly.
This does not mean that a husband could bully his wife, abuse her or take advantage of her. He has to base his decisions on an Islamic way and let what Islam teaches, to guide us on the path we take.
In other words, all he has to do is to ensure that the family follows an Islamic way of life.
However we must be careful not to use some parts of Islam and ignore others just so that we could get our way. Our Hazrath Saib, Hazrath Khwaja Sayed Shareef Ahmed Ali Shah (RA) used to say: “Laroo, laroo, jee bhar kar laroo, magar bichro nahie,” translation: “fight, fight to your heart’s content, but do not separate.”
We need to get things off our chest so that we could move ahead and by discussing things we come to solutions. Being firm does not mean that we should not forgive and understand the mistakes of others.
We all commit sins and make mistakes and when others do this, then we must be able to forgive and not react hastily by closing up our feelings and ending relationships.
Remember a rolling stone gathers no moss and if we continue breaking relationships we will never know love.
“Dil deya dildaar samaj kar, toe ne tokar deya football samaj kar” translation: “I gave you my heart thinking that you are a loving person but you kicked my heart thinking that it was a football.”
We joke about it but being jilted can be most painful and some people commit suicide over it.
It is therefore important to be careful not to treat our relationships lightly and to be careful not to hurt anyone.
We should also be careful in who we choose to love when we do have a choice. If we are looking for a spouse, or making friends then we need to look for good qualities in them.
The Holy Prophet (SAW) has said that of four qualities; wealth, status, beauty and piety we should choose a spouse based on piety.
There are many more hadith that teach us to choose our friends based on good qualities. Piety is not about how much we pray but it is about what is in our hearts and how we behave with others .
The Holy Prophet (SAW) has said that a woman that prays but does not treat her neighbour well will end up in hell and a woman that does not pray so much but treats her neighbour well will go to paradise.
He is teaching us not to be fooled by superficial acts of worship but to look deep. Our Hazrath Saib (RA) said: “Faquir mae aab bae hae sub kooch magar chaach lete hae paele tab deethe hae sub kooch.” A faquir has everything but he tests a person before he gives everything and everything includes his heart.
If you understand how great this heart is then you would shed tears of blood.
We need to treat everyone well but we must not just blindly open up our hearts totally to them even if they are our children. We must be ready to give our love but they must also earn it.
Our Murshid’s son, Hazrath Hakim Aijaaz Ali Shah (RA) said: “Public display of love is not true love and we must be careful not to encourage this or fall for this.”
In my personal experience I once saw my school mate show his mother his love for her by kissing and hugging her and even promising to always take care of her. A few years later, when my school mate got married, he simply left his parents for good.
In the times we live in, we are focusing on careers and material things for our daughters and we putting these things before family and love.
Our preceding generation was the least educated in terms of secular knowledge and careers but they were the most successful in terms of building a family. They grew to love their spouses and divorce was almost unheard of.
Not only were they successfully married but they had far better relationships with their entire family and neighbours. In the older generation of today, they are slightly more educated in terms of secular knowledge and 7% of our marriages ended in divorce and the chances of this figure increasing is highly unlikely because we are nearly at the end of the line.
In the young generation of today, the ones with the college and university degrees, the divorce rate is already at 30% and there is a great possibility of this figure getting higher because some of them have only just started off their married life.
Apart from divorce there are other problems such as young women not wanting to marry or to have children because it is going to affect their careers. There was an article run in the American magazine Forbes called “How do women, careers and marriage mix? Not well, say social scientists.”
This article was written by Michael Noer and he makes references to a whole lot of statistics to make his point that “you run a higher risk of having a rocky marriage.
While everyone knows that marriage can be stressful, recent studies have found professional women are more likely to get divorced, more likely to cheat and less likely to have children. And if they do have kids, they are more likely to be unhappy about it.”
What is also easily noticeable is that the family structures we live in, is getting smaller and smaller.
At one time many people shared a house and aunties and uncles had a say in the upbringing and discipline of the child. Today some of us live in houses that have more toilets than people and if an uncle had to say something about the child then the parents would stand up and fight with the uncle immaterial of whether he was right or wrong.
If we are not careful, then our children could end up living alone in huge houses with animals for companions. This is already happening in the European communities. Such people cannot even have one relationship of love with another human being and they end up sharing their lives with animals and some of them even leave their entire estate worth millions to animals.
We can already see this type of tendency among the wealthy in our community. These people that live in elite areas do not even know who their neighbours are. Is this what we want for our children?
In a receant study by Doug Downey & Donna Bobbitt-Zeher professors of sociology at The Ohio State University it was found, after interviewing 57 000 people, that the smaller the family you come from, the greater the chance of you getting divorced in adulthood. The reason for this, they say
“We found that the real story appears to be how family dynamics change incrementally with the addition of each sibling. More siblings means more experience (for the children) in dealing with others, and that seems to provide additional help in dealing with a marriage relationship as an adult.” They state “Each additional sibling reduces the likelihood of divorce by 2 percent”
Today, we not only have fewer children but we also further isolate ourselves and our children from grandparents, uncles etc. by living separately.
We need to change our outlook in life if we want our children to experience true happiness and love which is important with regards to our relationship with our Creator.
It all boils down to stop living our lives according to the superficial western model and to instead follow the Islamic way of life.
Peace and salutations be upon the Holy Prophet Muhammad PBUH