Does love always mean obedience?
I wanted to share something that I’ve been thinking about for a while and it’s something I would have never learned without being a father.
We often hear that love of Allah ﷻ can only be had through his obedience and if you do not obey Allah ﷻ then it’s not possible that you love him. Because if you truly loved Allah ﷻ and his Messenger ﷺ then you would obey him.
Now let’s ignore the Fiqh of this for the moment, because obviously you should and must obey the commandments of Allah ﷻ and his Messenger ﷺ. Let’s just talk about love.
I’ve noticed something while being a father. Kids don’t always listen to you. And sometimes they'll disobey a direct command even at the threat of punishment. And I got to thinking, why? It can’t be because they don’t love me. And a particular incident really showed me that this can’t be the case.
My elder daughter was told not to do something a number of times; don't hug your baby sister, a newborn, in a suffocating bear hug. She didn't understand that this could be dangerous.
But, she would continue doing it even after being told a number of times to stop and being pulled off. She had a lot of love to show for her sister and it was one of the only ways she knew how. She kept doing it so much and being reprimanded so much that she eventually got punished and lost tv for the day. She cried and had a tantrum to get the Roku back. She stopped the bear hugs. She came back to me and apologized and gave me a hug. I explained to her again why it’s dangerous.
The next day same thing happened, so she lost another toy.
The same cycle continued for a few more days until I told her a long story with our favorite character Bilal the Lion and his baby sister. This led to her almost stopping but it's now tolerable...but it still never completely went away.
And it really made me ponder about the love Allah ﷻ has for us. Because no matter how many times my daughter continued to not listen to me, I melted and let it go every time she came to apologize.
Now is it the case that she doesn't love me or my wife? No of course not. She loves us a lot and professes it multiple times a day.
I often hear from folks that those “jahils” who are performing the Mawlids, and attending the Urs of a saint do not have real love for Allah ﷻ, his Messenger ﷺ or the Saints (upon them be peace), but rather a fake love. That those people who are guzzling down alcohol outside of Ramadan but then cry on Lailatul Qadr at the Quran Khatham are munafiqs.
This is not the case. It's not the case at all. It means their obedience is deficient and indeed it may be. But those tears asking for forgiveness from Allah ﷻ, those moments of excitement at hearing the name of Sayyiduna Muhammad ﷺ are very real. If I am able to forgive my daughter for consistently disobeying, over and over and over and over again…then how can it be that Allah ﷻ, whose mercy is something we cannot even understand, won’t forgive us? We must cry at his doorstep. And our tears, and the tears of all the sinners are not fake, they are very real.
So real in fact, that perhaps they may be our only salvation.
I leave you with the following Hadith:
"A man asked the Prophet (ﷺ) about the Hour (i.e. Day of Judgment) saying, "When will the Hour be?" The Prophet (ﷺ) said, "What have you prepared for it?" The man said, "Nothing, except that I love Allah and His Apostle." The Prophet (ﷺ) said, "You will be with those whom you love." We had never been so glad as we were on hearing that saying of the Prophet (i.e., "You will be with those whom you love.") Therefore, I love the Prophet, Abu Bakr and `Umar, and I hope that I will be with them because of my love for them though my deeds are not similar to theirs."
(Sahih al-Bukhari 3688 - Book 62, Hadith 38)
~muin