HADITH NINETEEN : BE KIND FOR THE PROPHET TO LOVE YOU
We were with the Messenger صلى الله عليه وسلم and he asked for Wudu’ water, then he put his hands in it and made Wudu’. We collected his Wudu’ water and drank it. The Messenger صلى الله عليه وسلم asked us, «What moved you to do this?» We said, “The love of Allah and His Messenger.” He صلى الله عليه وسلم replied, «If you would love for Allah and His Messenger to love you, then fulfil if you are entrusted, be honest when you speak, and be good to your neighbours.»
Reported by al-Tabarani in al-Awsat (6517) and al-Albani declared it hasan (Sahih
al-Jami‘, 1409)
Commentary
Loving Allah and His Prophet is the best motivation for worship. And if we want Allah and His Prophet to love us, we should live and spread the love that they gave to us.
Why did they love him so much?
The amount of love the Companions had for the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم is mind-boggling. This says a lot about them and him. Listen to the following hadith.
When the Messenger صلى الله عليه وسلم would finish Fajr Prayer, the servants of Madinah would bring their vessels with water in them. Whenever they brought a vessel, he would dip his hand in it. At times, they came on cold mornings and he dipped his hand in them.
Reported by Muslim (2324)
It was their habit to bless their water with his hands صلى الله عليه وسلم. And he, in return, always obliged their requests, even if it was inconvenient and cold. This gives us a glimpse of why they loved him so much: he was very close to them and very merciful. Despite all ordeals and challenges, he continued to smile and comfort. He genuinely cared for them, and they could see that. He found the time to help, and was big-hearted and patient. He did not seek any worldly return, and they could see that too. They also
realized the value of what he gave, and how much they owed him. How do you repay someone who brings you closer to Allah? Who teaches you how to live again? To be happy now and to be happy forever in the next life? And on top of all of that, it is so easy to love him. He always receives you with a smile.
He is the humblest person you have ever seen, yet you know deep inside he has endless wisdom. The world offered itself to him, and he gave it all away. He lived on this earth but did not belong to it. His heart was with his Creator. You cannot be too comfortable here, he would say, for we are about to leave. Your real home is waiting for you, do not worry about this life. When you were with him, you felt as if you flew to the heavens and were seated next to the angels. When you left him, you could not wait to come back and see him again. How can you not love someone who reminds you of Allah every time you see him? Who takes your troubles and worries away just by looking at you? Who always makes you feel better because he reminds you that Allah is near? We cannot fully understand today how life-changing it was to be around him. Their love for him was deep and intense, this we know. And his love for them created wonderful human beings that are the best of humanity. We do not have the opportunity today to be around him as they did, to hear his comforting words, and be blessed with his company. But just like the Hadith teaches (more on this shortly), we have his words and wisdom. If we cannot be with him physically, we can be with his Sunnah. And with that, he will be around us. With that, we will love him, and he will love us. And in the
Hereafter, we will physically be with him. This is what loving Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم offers you.
It is worth noting that seeking blessings from someone’s body is exclusive to the blessed body of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم. No similar practice was extended to the Companions, including the best four: Abu Bakr, ‘Umar, ‘Othman, and ‘Ali M. They are the best of the best of Allah’s awliya’ (walis). If we were permitted to extend this practice to someone else, these four would be the most deserving. Since no Companion treated them in this fashion, it should be clear that no wali after them—who will always be inferior to them—deserves this unique treatment.
It is also worth noting that the blessings from the body of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم come from Allah. He is the only One who has the power to bless and cure. So, if someone touched the body of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم and was blessed, it was Allah who blessed him. Allah deposited the blessing in the Prophet’s body, and He transfers it to others if He wishes.
The right expression of love
The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم gently redirected his Companions to a fuller and more lasting expression of their love. And with that, he was teaching us a valuable lesson about love. Not all expressions of love are appropriate, even though the love itself may
be. This is religiously important, but it is also true everywhere else. If you love someone—a spouse or a child for instance— you have to translate this love into meaningful and beneficial acts. Otherwise, you could end up hurting them. We may love someone but fail to relay this love to them. We need to understand them to know what they need, what they expect, and what they appreciate.
This is true in our worship of Allah too. There are two conditions for the acceptance of a religious good deed: the intention must be pure (Ikhlas), and Allah must love the act. The way we know that Allah loves it is if He legislated it. For instance, when Salah is insincere, it is invalid. And a sincere intention inappropriately pursued is invalid too. For example, prostrating in front of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم (or his grave now) because we love him is inappropriate, even though the motive behind it is love. The following hadith illustrates this well.
There was a household from the Ansar who had a camel that they used to transport water on, and it became stubborn and refused to carry anything on its back. So these Ansar came to the Messenger صلى الله عليه وسلم and said, “We have a camel that we used
to transport water on, and it became stubborn and refuses to carry anything on its back, and the crops and trees are parched.” So the Messenger صلى الله عليه وسلم said to his Companions, «Let us go.» So they left, and he entered the garden, and the camel was in a corner, so the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم walked towards it. The Ansar said, “O Prophet of Allah, he is like a rabid dog, and we fear that he will harm you.” He صلى الله عليه وسلم said, «He will not harm me.» When the camel saw the Messenger صلى الله عليه وسلم, he walked to
him and prostrated in front of him. The Messenger صلى الله عليه وسلم held the camel’s forehead—it was the most docile that he ever was—and guided him to work. His Companions said to him, “O Prophet of Allah, this is an unintelligent animal that prostrates to you, and we are intelligent beings, so it is more of a right upon us to prostrate to you.” He said, “No human should prostrate to another human.”
Reported by Ahmad (12614) and al-Albani declared it sahih (Sahih al-Targhib, 1936)
The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم knew that his Companions suggested prostration out of love, but he disallowed it. No matter how intense our emotions may be, there has to be a check to help us avoid the extremes of love. Knowing very well love’s inclination to
move to the extreme, he صلى الله عليه وسلم said:
«Do not exaggerate in praising me as the Christians exaggerated in praising the Son of Mary, for I am only His slave. So say, “The slave of Allah and His Messenger.”»
Reported by al-Bukhari (3445)
Some love the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم, yet contradict his wishes and exaggerate his praise. True love would ask us not to go against his teachings. We cannot attribute anything to him unless it is authentic and reliable, or else we would be helping to spread lies about him. Calling Jesus S the son of God is not love. Love is to respect the thing he gave his life for, and that is the message of Tawhid. If we go against Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم in the name of love, we would be disrespecting him and upsetting the One who sent him. And the Prophet would not be happy with us if
he was to see that. What made him happiest was our piety and love for Allah. If we love him, we should follow his message precisely as his Companions did. We cannot change it in the name of love and expect him to love us.
Worshipping out of love
Multiple motivations spur our worship. We may worship out of fear, where we are disturbed by our sins and their potential punishment. Seeking Allah’s forgiveness and escaping from Hell would be the motivation for our worship. We may also pray out of hope. Attracted to all that Allah promised us in Jannah, we worship Him to win His Mercy and the beauty of eternal life in Paradise. Both of these approaches are legitimate and needed. We need hope and fear in our relationship with Allah to balance our excesses. When we are overconfident with our piety and lax with Allah’s prohibitions, an injection of fear is a healthy corrective to restore the balance. This is why Allah talked about Hell at length in the Quran. Most people, even in worldly affairs, respond to fear of punishment more than enticement of reward. But as potent as fear is as a motivator, it is not the only one. At other times, hope is what will excite us to worship Allah. This is also why Allah motivated us the Quran with the mention of Jannah and its splendour. Yet, there is a third motivator that is often overlooked. It is love. When one worships Allah out of love, they do so because Allah deserves it, out of gratitude for His bounties, and with the desire to be close to Him. Heaven and Hell are not the prominent motivators here, but Allah Himself is—even though the worshipper still desires Heaven and escape from Hell. The three approaches—love, hope, and fear—are complementary, not contradictory. All three are needed. Otherwise, the outcome will be a great imbalance in Iman and worship. Makhul, the famous Tabi‘i, said:
The one who worships Allah with fear [alone] is from the Khawarij. The one who worships Allah with hope [alone] is from the Murji’ah. The one who worships Allah with love [alone] is a heretic. The one who worships Allah with fear, hope, and love is on Tawhid.
Ihya’ ‘Ulum al-Din (vol. 4, p. 166)
If one worships Allah exclusively with fear, they will grow hopeless, grim, and harsh. When the Khawarij put undue emphasis on the fear of Allah, they excommunicated anyone who disagreed with them or committed a major sin from Islam. They were infamous for slaughtering other Muslims. On the other extreme, worshippers with hope alone tend to disregard the religious law, believing in guaranteed salvation. Surprisingly, worshipping with love alone is the most severe offence among the three. The first victim will be the laws of Islam, which will be disregarded based on a misguided sense of Allah’s overwhelming love. If Allah loves no matter what, the laws lose their meaning. The second and more devastating lapse is their relationship with Allah. Unchecked, love grows deformed and ends up compromising the Majesty of Allah. Thus the heresy Makhul warned against. When some express the desire to be
one with the Creator or deny any duality of existence (i.e. they and the Creator have always been one), you hear in their statements how imbalanced love can corrupt Tawhid. This is why Ibn Taymiyyah wrote:
There is more opposition to the Shari‘ah among those who claim the love [of Allah] than the people of the fear [of Allah]…And the scholars who authored the books of Sunnah [i.e. Aqidah] used to note in their creeds the avoidance of the one who excessively claims the love of Allah and talks about it without fear, for there is much corruption in that.
Majmu‘ al-Fatawa (vol. 10, p. 81–82)
The three ingredients together (fear, hope, and love) produce the Prophetic balance that moves us closer to Allah without compromising the purity of Islam.
At times, fear may be our dominant motivator. It could also be hope. Or it could be love. The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم pointed in the Hadith to worship out of love. He made the love of Allah and His Messenger the motive for what he asked them to do. In the Quran, Allah made love the first feature of those whom He chose when He said:
O believers, if any of you abandons your religion, Allah will replace you with people whom He loves and who love Him.
Al-Ma‘idah (Q5:54)
Love is the premise of our worship of Allah and its goal. It is the strongest motive to worship Him. There is no denying that fear and hope are indispensable components of our relationship with Allah. But love towers above them as a motive. The following from Wahb ibn Munabbih, the Tabi‘i, conveys the potency of the love of Allah.
They heard Wahb ibn Munabbih say, “A wise man once said ‘I feel embarrassed of my Rabb—Glory be to Him—to worship Him hoping for Heaven as a reward like a wage worker: he works if he is given his wage, but if not, he does not. And I feel embarrassed of my Rabb—Glory be to Him—to worship Him out of fear of Hell like a bad slave: if he is afraid he works but if he is not, he does not. But I worship Him because He deserves it.’ ” ‘Umar reports from Wahb ibn Munabbih that he said, “But the love of my Rabb—Glory be to Him—extracts from me what nothing else extracts.”
Al-Zuhd by Ibn al-Mubarak with an authentic chain to Wahb ibn Munabbih (p. 246)
Some are more motivated by fear, some by hope, and some by love. Each one of us moves between the three and relies on them as our Iman fluctuates and our needs change. For Wahb ibn Munabbih, love brought the best out of him, a more intense and devoted worship than out of hope and fear.
If love does not yield devoted worship, it is not true love but merely a claim and a wish. Allah said:
Say, “If you love Allah, then follow me and Allah will love you and forgive your sins.”
Ali ‘Imran (Q3:31)
The proof of one’s love of Allah is obeying and worshipping Him. If one desires the love of Allah without good deeds, they are indulging in fantasy. Worship is essential in watering the tree of love, or it will dry out and die. The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم loved Allah the most and worshipped Him the most; he did not stop His worship in the name of love.
There is a point in Wahb ibn Munabbih’s saying that merits further elaboration. His statement should not be mistaken to mean that desiring Heaven and fearing Hell is to be discouraged. This has been—and continues to be—a grave misunderstanding in some circles. Such an approach goes against the Quran and Sunnah. If it were true, why would Allah speak at length about Jannah and what awaits us in it? Then He said about Jannah:
So for this let the competitors compete.
Al-Mutaffifin (Q83:26)
Why would Allah warn us about Hell with such detail if not to do our best to run away from it? If we believe that we are not working to win Heaven and escape Hell, all these ayahs become irrelevant for us when we read the Quran. All the du‘a of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم for Jannah and against entry to Hell stop making sense. What Wahb ibn Munabbih noted was different. He was pointing to a state of worship where we are focused on ourselves and not Allah’s worthiness of worship. Someone at this stage will attain salvation, but they are missing the joy of worshipping Allah out of love, out of gratitude, and out of the desire to be near Him. Heaven and Hell move this person to
be righteous, but they do not consider that Allah deserves this worship for who He is. Were they to worship Him out of love, they will get Heaven and safety from Hell. The following from Ibn al-Qayyim explains this.
As for [Al-Harawi’s] statement, “And do not taint your compliance with compensation,” it means that your pursuit of the truth should be pure, compliance out of love, desire, and seeking the Beloved Himself, not tainted with seeking another prize and compensation. For once you have Him, you will have every compensation, every prize, and all portions. As it was mentioned that Allah said, “O child of Adam, seek me
and you shall find me. And when you find me, you shall find everything. But if you lose me, you shall lose everything. And I am dearer to you than everything [An Israelite tradition].” So, he who does not seek anyone but Allah and does not taint his pursuit with other compensations, but makes it out of love for Him and sincerely seeks His Face, it is he who wins all compensations, portions, and prizes. Since he did not make these [compensations] his goal, they became his while also being worthy of praise, thanks, and he was brought closer to Allah. But if these were his goal, he will have less of them in so much as he is distracted by them from seeking Allah for Himself and wanting Him. This person’s heart is occupied with them but only gets very little of them, but the heart of the knowledgeable is not attached to them, and he wins them all. So, turning away from them does not make you lose them but is, in fact, how you get them. But turning away from Allah is the thing that makes you lose Him and all winnings.
Madarij al-Salikin (vol. 2, p. 332)
Worshipping Allah out of love does not contradict seeking Heaven but elevates it to the next level. Heaven can be sought and enjoyed for all the created beauty that is in it—food, drink, indescribable sights—and this is praiseworthy. Allah highlighted it in the Quran because it is a legitimate goal. But the greatest joy in Heaven is seeing Allah and talking to Him. This is the greatest beauty of Jannah. And so when our Iman is strong, we aspire for the latter. And when we are weaker, we focus on all the beauty Allah prepared in Heaven. This energises us again to march towards Allah and seek Him out of love for Him.
The nature of worship and the satisfaction we receive from it vary based on the motivation. Let us listen again to Ibn al-Qayyim.
He should not move himself unwillingly to Allah like a forced labourer, but what attracts and pulls his heart should be willingly and lovingly compliant like water running down a slope. This is the condition of true lovers: their worship is voluntary, out of love and content. In it, they find their eyes’ contentment, their hearts’ happiness, and the joy of their souls, as the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم said, «And the contentment of my eye was put in Salah.» And he used to say, «O Bilal, bring us comfort with it.» The contentment of the eyes of the lover, their delight, and the bliss of their soul is in obeying their beloved, unlike one who obeys begrudgingly and serves like carrying a weight. As for [al-Harawi’s] statement, “the humiliation of compulsion,” there is a hidden benefit, which is that the one who obeys begrudgingly believes that were it not for him having to submit to being overpowered and were it not for the punishment of their master, he would not obey him. So, he tolerates his obedience like one who is
compelled and had been subdued by the one who forced him and overpowered him. This is unlike the lover who considers obeying his beloved to be nourishing, a blessing, a delight, and happiness. For this one, his motive is not the humiliation of compulsion.
Madarij al-Salikin (vol. 2, p. 101–102)
When one worships out of love, they find joy in their worship. They want to do more of it, and they cannot wait for it. It gives them more than anything in the world can. The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم found absolute joy in his Salah. He enjoyed it because it comforted him. When one worships consistently out of fear alone, it may create a burden that takes away the beauty of worship. There is a difference between one who drags themselves to worship, bored and tired, and one who happily runs to it. We need love to motivate us, to extract the best out of us.
When the love of Allah is the inspiration, all our worship will seem insufficient. Thu al-Nun said:
The one who loves Allah sees all their deeds as insignificant.
Al-Zuhd al-Kabir (p. 78)
When we worship out of love, we will know that all our worship falls short of what Allah deserves. How can we repay and thank Allah for all His blessings when we cannot even count them? Even our gratitude is a blessing from Allah that needs to be thanked, so how can we ever thank Him? How can we worship Allah in ways that befit His Perfection? Our worship is plagued with imperfection: we forget, we daydream, and we sin. Yet even if we were to worship like the angels, it would not be enough. Salman al-Farisi explained that the angels will say on the Day of Judgement:
Glory be to You, we did not worship You as You deserved to be worshipped.
Al-Silsilah al-Sahihah (941)
Worship out of love saves us from feeling entitled, feeling like we have done so much and deserve something in return. It saves us from paying undue attention to our actions, and helps us to focus instead on the One we are worshipping. When we do that, He will give us all that we need and more.
How to get His love
The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم revealed to us in this Hadith what to do to gain the love of Allah and His Messenger. And in the following hadiths in this book, he will tell us more. But we need to understand why he said what he said.
The Companions in the Hadith expressed their love through seeking physical proximity and blessings from the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم . And this, as we explained before, was legitimate. But it is also limited. It was not available to the Companions when they
were not near him, and not available to us and them after his death. The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم sought to move them to something bigger and more lasting: from bodily blessing to the blessings of his teachings, and from receiving to giving. It is as if he was saying to them: if you want love, spread love. If you want love, be it. If you want love, then practice it after my death.
When we are honest when we speak, kind when we act, and trustworthy, we exemplify the message of Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم. This is why he came and sacrificed, for us to embrace Islam and spread it, for us to change and help others to change. He will be happy when we become a mercy to others as he was a mercy to all. The circle of love that he started must expand. This will happen when we embrace the truth and act on it. The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم was telling them that the message of Islam is not about one
man—no matter how great he was—and not about a specific time and place—no matter how blessed it was. It is about a belief that transforms lives and changes the world. This is how we reach the love of Allah and His Messenger.
DR. ALI ALBARGHOUTHI
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