The Method of Love, The Path to Success*

A servant who fails to discover the love of Allah becomes idle, ungrateful, rude, unkind, destructive, rebellious, oppressive, cruel, disobedient, sinful, detrimental...

The essence of Islam is the love of Allah; and love for Allah generates love for the Messenger of Allah, love for the Qur’an, love for faith, love for worship, love for good deeds, love for Muslims, love for brethren, love for people, love for art… from it comes forgiveness, mercy, patience, gratitude, effort and beneficence.

The principle of Sufism (tasawwuf) is to generate the servant’s love for Allah, and Allah’s love for His servant. Sufism ensures this by using very distinctive, subtle, and extensive methods; it transforms the servant into a true lover and beloved of Allah. Rumi’s Mathnawi is love, the sound of the reed flute is love, Fuzuli’s poetry is love, Ibrahim Hakkı’s Ma'rifetnâme is love, the poems of Yunus is love, the compositions of ’Itrî is love, the worshiper’s seclusion is love, the dervish’s dhikr is love, the mujahid’s jihad is love, the warrior’s attack against the enemy proclaiming “Allah! Allah!” is love, the martyr losing his life is love, a war-veteran’s honor in combat is love.

Everything that exists in the universe is love

Knowledge is but empty talk!¹

A person should never exceed his capabilities without lighting of the flame of divine love in his heart. If he does, he  will make things more complicated; he will cause harm while trying to do good, hurt others, break hearts, create problems, generate hostility between servants; regret what he did in anger, destroy  while attempting to guide, confuse issues while trying to prosper; indeed, the lack of knowledge will cause one to perish…

The main condition of providing good services to the public is being a good servant to Allah. He who is disloyal towards his Creator will never bring prosperity or be beneficial to creation! He may adorn his apparent virtues, but this bears no value if his heart is polluted and corrupt! He may speak in a civilized and appealing manner, but this has no significance if his intention is bad!

A majority of the grievances we experience today are not inflicted by our enemies, but by the fallacies of Muslims. Indeed, enemies have existed since the early days, but true Muslims gained many splendid victories despite these enemies; they established many noble civilizations, they dominated the world guiding and governing many nations for centuries with justice and prosperity.

“A person attains wisdom by recognizing his own faults.” The Muslim world must begin to recognize its own mistakes, correct these mistakes and amend its methods.

Today, I observe the events, words and works presented in the name of Islam… I feel deeply ashamed and sad. They act with the wrong mentality; they use the wrong methods. They embrace the enemy as friends; such people personally create their own destruction. Instead of gaining people’s affection they are hurting their feelings, gaining hatred, generating hostility, and increasing  their enemies.

Today, every Muslim must pay particular attention and care towards his own attitude, appearance, dress, actions, words and dealings with others; he must certainly avoid leaving a bad impression so that those who observe him from a distance do not feel  anger or hate towards him and are distanced from Islam. Every Muslim should strive to promote and make Islam appealing to others; to achieve this; an individual must make an incredible effort to set himself as a good example, an envied and admirable figure. This is the means of attaining the pleasure of Allah,  the path to follow; this is the means of attaining success.

* Başmakaleler(leading articles) 1: Islâm Dergisi Başmakaleleri, Istanbul: Server İletişim, 2017, (November 1991 dated article), pp. 265-267.
Fuzûlî Divanı, p. 306.
2. For this hadith narrated by Abu Hurayra (ra), see: Ahmad b. Hanbal, II, 400, hadith no: 9187; Hākim, I, 73, hadith no: 59.