Allah says النَّبِيُّ أَوْلَىٰ بِالْمُؤْمِنِينَ مِنْ أَنفُسِهِمْ “The Prophet is more entitled to the faithful than their very souls” (al-Aḥzāb 33:6), and this faith can only be perfected by a deep love for the Messenger ﷺ; and that love only grows from an intimate familiarity with him; and that intimate familiarity with him becomes all the more intimate the more one immerses himself in the shamāʾil of the Prophet ﷺ, and the more he keeps the company of those who have, likewise, immersed themselves. Otherwise, one’s love for the Prophet ﷺ risks being a cursory and perfunctory notion never exceeding what is known about him superficially.
So when ignorance bears this love, then it cannot suckle the milk of virtue or purity; when ignorance bears this love, then one’s beloved is but an object of ascription or affiliation or a mere subscription to an identity or ideology; when ignorance bears this love, then one’s beloved is but an amalgamation of interpolations in a fanciful imagination; when ignorance bears this love, then one’s beloved is but an image he conjures up as a portrait of his own infatuation; when ignorance bears this love, then one’s beloved is but a mutated justification of crimes perpetrated for his sake and perpetuated in his name; when ignorance bears this love, then one’s beloved is but an emotional projection of his own idiosyncrasies, caprices, and impulses; when ignorance bears this love, then one’s beloved is but a mere pretense of security affording him a degree of assurance as he polices others in how best to lay their claims to piety in orthopraxy, zealous imitation, and compulsive regurgitation; when ignorance bears this love, then one’s beloved is ultimately irrelevant, for he only sees himself while impervious to the reality of the Beloved, and while resistant to any detail of the Beloved contrary to the version he has forged and supposed for himself; when ignorance bears this love, there is no beloved.
The right of the Beloved ﷺ upon the lover, then, is knowledge; and the threshold of knowledge ushers to the door of intimacy; and the door of intimacy opens to the courtyard of true love. Otherwise, any claim of love is, essentially, a leap of faith! And what good is faith if not founded and grounded in knowledge! And what good is knowledge if not donned in the garb of yearning.
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Taught by El-Hajj Hisham Mahmoud
Recommended reading: al-Shamāʾil al-Muḥammadiyyah by al-Tirmidhī
