position of everythingness. He will feel no limitation or restriction. In a well‑known hadith, we read that
A pure servant of God whose will is melt into His will be able to bring about extraordinary deeds.
Sheikh Mahmud Shabistari in his Sa'adat Nameh has a beautiful description of what he takes to be different stages of the spiritual journey towards God. He says:
Suhrawardi in his On the Reality of Love elaborates his view on the spiritual journey. He believes that this journey and its states and stations arise from virtue (husn), love (miter) and reflective sadness (huzn). He relates virtue to the knowledge of God and love to the knowledge of self. Sadness is the outcome of the knowledge of what was not and then was.
Suhrawardi believes that knowledge of the self leads to the discovery that the self is divine and this results in loving God and having Sufi experiences. It is indeed a Qur'anic idea which is clearly and greatly emphasised by ahadith that there is a necessary relation between knowing one's self and knowing one's Lord. For example, the Prophet Muhammad said: "Whoever knows himself has known his Lord."13 Suhrawardi believes that sadness is caused by reflection on the created order which signifies separation of man and his departure from his original abode.14
According to Islam, love for God is very active and manifests itself in all aspects of one's life. It shapes all one's love and hatred. It also shapes one's behaviour with others and with one's self. In the well‑known hadith of nawafil (meaning noncompulsory good deeds) we read:
Nothing makes My servants closer to Me compared to the performance of obligatory deeds, wajibat. My servant constantly gets close to me by nawafil till I love him. When I love him, then I shall be his ears with which he listens, his eyes with which he sees, his tongue with which he speaks, and his hands with which he holds: if he calls Me, I shall answer him, and if he asks Me, I shall give him. 15
A sincere lover has no power to disobey the beloved person or to refuse his wishes. Imam Jafar al‑Sadiq said: "Do you disobey God and pretend you love Him? This is amazing. If you were true you would have obeyed Him, for the lover is submissive before the one whom he loves".16 We read in the Qur'an:
O you who believe! Whoever from among you turns back from his religion, then God will bring a people, He shall love them and they shall love Him, lowly before the believers, mighty against the unbelievers, they shall strive hard in God's way and shall not fear the censure of any censurer. (5:54)
The history of Islam is full of memories of those who embodied a sincere and overwhelming love for God and His religion. One of those who full‑heatedly devoted himself to Islam was Bilal al Habashi, a black slave. The pagans of Quraysh in Mecca subjected him to torture asking him to mention names of their idols express his belief in them and disbelieve in Islam. They tormented him under the burning sun by laying him on scorching stones and putting heavy rocks on his chest. Abu Bakr, a rich companion of the Prophet, was passing by when he heard the cry of Bilal. He went close and advised him to hide his belief, but Bilal was not prepared to do so; since "love was ever rebellious and deadly". Illustrating the event, Rumi says:
A believer who loves God is expected to love His people and be kind to them. Of course, those whose evil character surpasses this factor are excluded. The Prophet said:
O servant of God, let your love and hate be for the sake of God, because no one can attain to the wilayah (guardianship) of God without that, and no one shall find the taste of faith without that, though his prayers and fast be great in number.18
If one's love and hate are to be only for the sake of, it would be impossible not to love His people.
On the necessity of love for people, we see that the Qur'an praises those members of the Household of the Prophet who fasted three days and gave everyday the only little food that they had at home successively to a poor, an orphan, and a captive: "And they give food out