The Wrappings of Gratitude

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

In the Name of Allah Most-Compassionate, Most-Merciful

Listen to the video as you read. The words to the title of this post are taken from a film, its actually the theme tune to ‘Legend of Zorro’, which fits well with the film. The line, ‘I want to spend my lifetime loving you’, is not just about what we may ordinarily think about love, its actually a declaration, a declaration of what that love means and how it shows its devotion. So its not just telling your beloved you love them, but that they are your life, you need them, spend your life loving them. This is passion. Not just a beautiful love, but a love of conviction, and conviction only comes from certainty, and from certainty comes passion. But that conviction can only come from believing in love, and true belief is only rooted in what we are certain is right.

So believing in love is quite different to wanting love. Some may say that you can only want it if you believe in it, but thats not true because the true depths of love are almost unknown. How does one that has never felt or known an intense love, know whether that kind of love exists, and hence if they don’t know it exists then how do they know what to seek? In the absence of not knowing what is absolute, unchanging, pure and true, people will take their learning from what they see around them. This is typically what I have found, in that women usually take their concept of love from what they have seen around them, rather than referring to the Quran and Sunnah. This means that they tend to want to fit any prospective love into their own definition of love before considering that their own concept of may not be entirely true or pure. But without experiencing an intense love how can one come to know it? The answer is simple, its all based on your desire to want to know the truth, of what is real. And the basis of this is found in the Sunnah, in the prayer the prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, when he prayed to Allah to show him reality as it truly was. It is from this prayer that each and every one of us can make, that Allah places into ones heart, visions and understandings of what is true and real. And if it is love that a person is seeking to understand as it truly is then Allah enters into that heart an understanding that cannot be gained through reading alone. It is from this desire that Allah rewards the seekers of truth with the purest of understandings, and those understandings are very intense because they contain both knowledge, experience and emotion. And once when you begin to percieve, in this case, love in a different way, in the way that is shown in the Quran and Sunnah, then one does not want any other love, because you have seen that there is only one definition that is true.

Love and Love for Justice

I want you to see this film because the kind of love shown here is not a easy comfortable love, this love contains both joy and pain, deep emotion, but above all else the association that is made in the film is between a love for justice and love itself. They are one and the same, and one helps to purify the other, keep it true. It is in the absence of possessing a love for justice that the concept of love people generally develop becomes a wishy-washy kind of love with no real substance.

To say ‘I want to spend my lifetime loving you’ says much more than I love you. It says I can only spend my lifetime loving you, if I spend my lifetime fighting for you, and to fight for you means that I am fighting to love you in the purest way, which means fighting for justice, because to love is a form of justice in itself. To love ones family and children, is justice, because you are testifying to the truth, testifying that the only way to live is to spend ones lifetime loving. So true love is the reward for fighting to know what it is, the fight for it begins with ones desire to know what it truly is, and then fighting, come what may, to never let go of it. This is how Allah tests the purity of hearts, by making it dificult to believe in something in order to see how we are going to respond. If we give up easily then it means that it we didn’t possess the requisite seriousness about a very valuable concept, something that Allah is not simply going to grant us until we show Him how serious we are about it.

True Love is Certainty, Certainty is rooted in the Absolute, true Justice is Absolute

True love is justice. This is the connection made in the film, between love and justice, and that striving for justice is the perservation of love. It is the constant reward for striving for the sake of what is right. Alejandro in the film did not want to give up who he was, he did not and could not stop wanting to help people, help fighting for justice, but Elena didn’t understand this. She just wanted Alejandro for herself, didn’t want to share him with anyone else. But some may argue that perhaps thats a sign of the purity of her love for Alejandro, but this cannot be true because this rejects the essence of who Alejandro was, as someone who loved justice. Hence Elena didn’t want to love him for who he was, but who she wanted him to be, according to her idea of love, but his idea was much higher. This is exactly what is happening with the sisters today. The foundation of true love rests on loving ones beloved for who they are, and the purity of that love entirely depends on the extent to which ones beloved loves justice. Justice purifies love, it is what love truly stands for. Hence to possess anything near the concept of true love presented in Islam, begins firstly with a desire for justice. It is only after this that one can begin to understand true love.

To say I want to spend my lifetime loving you, is also to say, I love you, with a passion. To say that I want to live for you, live for love, live for everything that is right and true and pure and just, because everything that is just is love. And when everything fits inside that love, then life is complete, whole, and consequently we become whole, complete people. In the absence of wanting justice for oneself and others first, our concept of love is not going to be anywhere near complete here on this earth. And if not complete here on earth then how can we be prepared for the next life? If marriage is intended to be the completion of deen, how can this be possible without possessing a complete concept of love to guide ones beloved? This is not something that can simply develop over time, unless it begins from the outset of the journey.

It is this lack of passion in being determined to know what true love is and seek a partner on that basis, that I am increasingly finding absent amongst those women I have been in ‘marriage dissussions’ with. I wrote not so long ago about not seeking ordinary but wanting extraordinary in our lives, and this so, because God has not created anything to be ordinary in the universe, everything speaks of extraordinary. And yet it seems, mediocre, plain, boring, still, unmoving or even dead will do for many, and it will do because to even seek to be different, unique and extraordinary requires, it seems, more effort than people are willing to put into life, into love, into marriage. I cant speak for the brothers, but I can say of the sisters, that a large majority of those I have met are very much seeking ordinary. He must be ordinarily practicing, must have an ordinarily good job, and an ordinarily good personality, and be all round a good ordinary guy. This is what is coming from the sisters, because what they do not want is extraordinary, and they dont want extraordinary because to stand out requires courage. They want someone, you sisters out there want someone to fit in, to fit you into their version of life and love, even if it does not reflect the teachings of the Quran and Sunnah. I have by now heard the full range of excuses, from the parents only seeking someone from their own background, to the fact that apparently the husband does not help his wife to Jannah, that this is not the purpose of marriage, or that these ideas are over complicating what is very simple. Well my answer to that would be to ask, “is the path to Jannah very simple also”? My point here is that there is a injustice being perpetrated here by many sisters, in rejecting what they should be accepting, and accepting what they should be rejecting, they are taking the easier option.

وَالْمُؤْمِنُونَ وَالْمُؤْمِنَاتُ بَعْضُهُمْ أَوْلِيَاء بَعْضٍ يَأْمُرُونَ بِالْمَعْرُوفِ وَيَنْهَوْنَ عَنِ الْمُنكَرِ وَيُقِيمُونَ الصَّلاَةَ وَيُؤْتُونَ الزَّكَاةَ وَيُطِيعُونَ اللّهَ وَرَسُولَهُ أُوْلَـئِكَ سَيَرْحَمُهُمُ اللّهُ إِنَّ اللّهَ عَزِيزٌ حَكِيمٌ

“The Believers, men and women, are protectors one of another: they enjoin what is just, and forbid what is evil: they observe regular prayers, practise regular charity, and obey Allah and His Messenger. On them will Allah pour His mercy: for Allah is Exalted in power, Wise”. (At-Tauba 9:71)

How can the believers, men and women, be protectors one of another, if their love doesn’t stand for anything. And if their love doesn’t stand for anything then how can they enjoin right and forbid wrong? The only path is that of humbling oneself to the standard of the Quran and Sunnah, rather than create ones own relative standard. Because even if a person is unable to meet that standard, their humility ensures that God will help them. But without doing so, without being honest with oneself, without testifying to the truth that the Quran and Sunnah reside above us, above the marriage, then, as the above ayah implies, they cease to be true believers, and consequently forego one of the cornerstones of this religion which is to enjoin right and forbid wrong. Everything must be grounded, rooted to what we know to be absolute, which is the Quran and Sunnah, from which we derive all our understandings, upon which we can have complete confidence because the Quran and Sunnah are perfect.

“This day have I perfected your religion for you, completed My favour upon you, and have chosen for you Islam as your religion”. (Al-Maeda, 5:3)

There is only one standard, and although its a very high standard, that of the Quran and the Sunnah, it is we that must lift ourselves to it, to humble ourselves before it, before Allah. We know what the mountain next to Musa (as) did to itself our of shear humility for the Light of Allah, and yet when it come sto the Sunnah, we refuse to humble ourselves to it, but instead expect the Sunnah to meet our standard. This cannot be, and any attempts do live according to this precept is a sure way to cause one to lose the blessings of Allah.

Be passionate, do everything with passion, with excellence, and you will find that both passion and excellence will be your reward, but without justice neither will be yours, except but a forelorn love which belongs neither in this world or in the next.