notifications_active Weekly Meshkat-e Noor Session: Thursdays at 20:30 at Haj Reza Mosque
In one of your lectures, you said that love for the Imams should be for God’s sake. Is it possible for someone to love the Ahl al-Bayt for worldly reasons?
What does it mean to love the Ahl al-Bayt for worldly reasons?
Love for the Ahl al-Bayt should be “for God’s sake,” with divine love as its ultimate aim. Love motivated by worldly gain, pleasure, enjoyment, or the fulfillment of personal wishes is not love for God; it is incomplete. Their merits are a means of attaining true knowledge and love, not an end in themselves.
Love takes many forms, including the transactional and the gnostic. Love of the Beloved through His signs, when it stops at those signs, is incomplete and unreal. Love of the signs should lead us to love the One who brings them into being; but love of Him cannot be attained without knowing Him. His signs are paths that lead to knowledge and love of Him.
Someone who falls in love with a person because of their beauty loves the outward sign, not the person whose beauty it is. Beauty is a path to the Beloved; to stop at beauty is to worship the signs. Beauty and pleasure are veils through which the Beloved’s attractions draw the lover towards Him. The true lover is one drawn into the pull towards the Beloved, without stopping at signs, appearances or veils.
The Infallibles, peace be upon them, are the straight path and the nearest way to divine love. The signs and remembrances are expressions of love for God. Love for the Imams counts as love for God only when the lover reaches—or strives to reach—the ultimate end of that love: divine love. That is, one must travel the path and reach the appointed meeting-place of love, where one encounters God.
Even within love for the path, there may be different aims. If someone intends the destination of this path to be pleasure, happiness or the fulfilment of their wishes, their love will not be divine.
Even if our intention in loving the Imams is to attain the highest Paradise, that love will not be for God.
و قال ع: من أحب أن یکمل إیمانه فلیکن حبه لله و بغضه و رضاه « » و سخطه لله « (4)»:
و قال ع: من أعطى فی الله و منع فی الله و أحب فی الله [و أبغض فی الله] « (5)» فقد استکمل الإیمان
مستدرک الوسائل و مستنبط المسائل، ج12، ص: 228
قال: و قال أبو عبد الله علیه السلام:
«من أحبنا لله نفعه الله بذلک و لو کان أسیرا فی ید الدیلم، و من أحبنا لغیر الله فإن الله یفعل به ما یشاء. إن حبنا- أهل البیت- لیحط الذنوب عن العباد کما تحط الریح الشدیده الورق عن الشجر»
قرب الإسناد (ط - الحدیثه)، متن، ص: 39
عن الحسین بن علی (علیه السلام)، قال: من أحبنا لله وردنا نحن و هو على نبینا (صلى الله علیه و آله) هکذا- و ضم إصبعیه- و من أحبنا للدنیا فإن الدنیا تسع البر و الفاجر.
الأمالی (للطوسی)، النص، ص: 253