east, I would extend my feelings of deep gratitude to God in place of His every favour upon us and upon all His servants, past and still remaining.
London, February 2001
In early kalam (Islamic theology), a heated debate started on the purpose behind God's creations and acts. Some theologians thought that the attribution of reason or purpose to His deeds leads to the assumption that God is in need of His creatures and He creates them to meet some needs, just like a human being who, say, works to earn money, or studies to learn. However the dominant view, especially among those who have had a more rationalistic approach like Nasir ul‑Din al‑Tusi has always been that God is the Wise (hakim), so whatever He does is for some exactly and carefully pre‑studied purposes. He never does something arbitrarily or in vain. It is asserted in the Qur'an that, "What! Did you then think that We had created you in vain...?" (23:115)
Of course, it is clear that God Himself does not gain anything from His creatures, nor from His act of creation. This is not only because He is completely free from any sort of need, but also because it is logically impossible that a given effect would have any type of influence on its (existential) cause. Whatever the effect has is received from the cause and it would be circular to suppose it otherwise. God has not created the universe to make some benefits for Himself, but rather to give benefits. A popular Persian poem says: "I have not created the creation to get some benefits, I have created people to show them my generosity."
There is a famous divine saying (hadith qudsi) which can probably be found in all books written about the goal of creation in Islam. According to this hadith, God says: "I was a hidden treasure; I loved to be known. Hence I created the world so that I would be known."(My translation) The Arabic original term for "loved" is derived from the root hubb, which means to like or to love. In other words, hubb is a general concept that can belong to simple things such as preferring some types of food (which in English could be translated as 'would like') or to the most important things in one's life such as the intensive desire for someone or some ideals as the beloved to the extent that one might even be ready to be destroyed in order to please the beloved or secure it. Hubb in such cases can be translated into 'love'. There is another term in the Islamic culture which is sometimes used in Arabic and more commonly in Persian to mean the intensive love i.e. 'ishq. There is also wudd which means mostly friendship and affection.
Thus, a question arises: why did God love to be known? Certainly, God has no desire for fame. The purpose behind His love to be known is understandable by considering the fact that God who is the Wise, the Compassionate and the Omnipotent creates the universe and particularly human beings to give them the maximum grace and perfection that they have the capacity for receiving. Of course, the perfection of any kind of being is decided by the degree of its similarity or closeness to God, and the most important factors in this are love of God, and prior to that knowledge of God, since there can be no love without knowing the beloved subject.1
Since the reason for loving something is nothing other than the apprehension by the lover of the beauty and perfection or more generally the goodness of the beloved, the greatest possible love is certainly the love of God for Himself. God is the most beautiful and the most perf ct being and His apprehension of Himself is also the best apprehension, so His love for Himself and His joy are the most intensive ones. Avicenna writes:
The necessarily existent (Wajib al‑wujud) that has the highest perfection, beauty and brightness and perceives of Himself as so with a complete perception ... is in Himself the greatest lover and the greatest beloved and has the greatest joy ...2
Elsewhere he says:
The being that has the greatest joy in respect to something is the First (al‑Awwal) in respect to Himself, since He has the greatest understandi