Love for Allah

Bismillah.

Shiblī said, “I learned Sufism from a dog that was sleeping at the door of a house. The owner came out and was driving the dog away, but the dog kept on coming back. I said to myself, 'How base this dog is! He drives him away, and he keeps on coming back.' The Exalted Lord brought that dog to speech and it said, 'O Shaykh! Where should I go? He is my owner.'”

I will not leave the Friend at a hundred iniquities and cruelties.

Even if He increases them, I will not be troubled, It is I who chose Him over everyone else;

if I complain about Him, I will have no excuse.

(Kashf Al-Asrar Tafsir of Surah al-Baqarah 2:165)

As for the faithful, their friendship is the fruit of the Real's friendship - as He says, “He loves them, and they love Him” [5:54]. Therefore the steep roads and trials that come to them do not bring any defect into their love, so they do not turn away from the Real.

Despite these tribulations and trials that come into their road, at each moment they fall more into passion and expend their spirits and hearts even more in friend- ship for the Real. With the tongue of the state they say,

“If You're happy with my grief, give me grief upon grief!

Away with a passion that decreases with a hundred cruelties!”

This is why He says, “Those who have faith are more intense in love for God” [2:165].

(Kashf Al-Asrar Tafsir of Surah al-Baqarah 2:166)

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“God mentions His Most Beautiful Names in the Quran so as to clarify to His servants that they must negate Divine Attributes from themselves and affirm them for God alone. God speaks of His Exaltation and their abasement, His Knowledge and their ignorance, His Holiness and their taintedness, His Life and their death, His Unity and their multiplicity. But ‘when He gave news of love, just as He affirmed love for Himself, so also He affirmed love for us—He loves them, and they love Him.’” ~ Aḥmad al-Samʿānī (d. 534/1140) in ‘The Qur’an and Sufism’ by William C. Chittick, in The Study Quran ~