Allah says in the Holy Quran:
Meaning: But those who believe, love Allah the most. (2:165)
Man fosters love for his relations and possessions. For example, he loves Allah and the Holy Prophet, he loves his parents, wife, children, siblings, friends, home, land, property, city, tribe, kith and kin, business etc. The love which becomes intense and dominates all other loves is called the ardent love and is denoted by Ishq (in Arabic). If such ardent love is for Allah then it is called Divine love (Ishq-Haqeeqi ). This love turns all the other loves into ashes and overpowers them.
Sultan-ul-Ashiqeen, the Insan -Kamil of this era, has given the following quotes about divine love
- To sacrifice all the dear and favourite things, relations and wealth for Allah is called Divine love.
- To devote everything for the Beloved is called love.
- Love is the name of renouncing comfort and peace for the sake of the Beloved.
- To abandon luxury for the Beloved is called love.
- Prohibiting oneself from making claims is love.
- To negate desires is love.
- The sincere intention and the true seeking are called Divine love.
- Love is rapture, remedy is the vision of the Beloved.
- Love is to sacrifice yourself.
- Love means not to let the tongue complain, the mind object and the eye suspect.
- Love is submission and obedience.
- Love is slavehood.
- Love is forgetting oneself.
- The disgrace in love is dearer than the respect.
- In love’s diction, words like esteem and humiliation do not exist.
- Love is neither enhanced nor lessened by reward or punishment, respectively.
- Truth is distinguished from falsehood in the arena of love.