many sources. I would like here just to mention only one profound statement. In a well‑known prayer, Jushan al‑Kabir, God is addressed as the one "whose mercy has preceded His wrath".
As we will see later, this wrath or anger is also out of His love and mercy. If His love or mercy did not exist He would not care at all. It is like a father who becomes angry with his son when he does something wrong, because he has care and concern for his son and his entire family, because he wants his son to correct his behaviour and set a lesson for other children not to copy that wrong act.
God has different levels or degrees of love for His creatures. One is His general and encompassing love that includes all beings. If there were no such love nothing, would be brought into being. This love includes even wrongdoers, since they also manifest or represent some stages of goodness in their essence and this is that aspect of their being which is loved by God, though it might be overwhelmed by the demonic aspect of their characters and therefore they might be overall hated.
A higher level of Divine love is His love for true believers, those who believe in Him, the ultimate Truth and do good deeds. Those are the people "He loves and who love Him" (5:54). In the Qur'an, we find that God loves "the doers of justice" (5:42; 8:60; 9:49), "those who purify themselves" (9:108), "the pious" (3:76; 9:4 & 7), "those who do good (to others)" (5:13 & 93; 3:134 & 148; 2:195) "those who trust (Him)" (4:35) "the patient" (3:146) and "those who repent very much and purify themselves" (2:222).
It is noteworthy that in the Qur'an in many cases God's displeasure is described not by focusing on His hatred, but rather indirectly by phrases, such as "God does not love any ungrateful (or unbeliever) sinner" (2:276), "God does not love the unjust" (3:57&1140), "surely, God does not love him who is proud, boastful" (4:36) and "surely God does not love him who is treacherous, sinful" (4:107).
According to Islam, the highest level of Divine love for any creature is His love for perfect human beings, such as prophets. The Prophet Muhammad has a special place in this regard. One of the wellknown titles of him is Habib Ullah, which means the beloved of God. In a famous Divine saying God addresses the Prophet, "If thou were not, I would not have created the heavens." As S.H. Nasr and many others have indicated, "Muslim saints over the centuries have seen in the love of God for the Prophet and in his love for God the prototype of all love between man and his creator". 5
Similar to what we saw earlier in the case of Divine love, human love for God, for His creation, for good deeds, and for each other plays a crucial role in the Islamic world‑view, especially in theology, mysticism and ethics. Indeed, love for the truths embodied in the religion builds up the faith. For Muslim theologians, and indeed inspired by the Qur'an, although faith is based on knowledge of the religious facts, it is not reducible to that knowledge. There might be people who have knowledge of the religious facts and are confident about them but still do not commit themselves to any faith. The faith and belief only come when a person voluntarily commits himself to acceptance of articles of faith and does not refuse to follow them. In other words, the faith is there only when one loves the religious beliefs and not just when one comes to know them. The Qur'an says:
And they denied them (Divine signs or miracles) unjustly and proudly while their soul had been certain about it. (27:14)
The prototype example of those who know very well but refuse to practice what they have known is Iblis, the great Satan. According to Islamic sources, Iblis does whatever he does out of arrogance and selfishness, not out of ignorance.
Thus, a person becomes faithful and a believer only when he has respect and love for certain facts i.e. articles of faith. We read in a famous hadith that the Prophet Muhammad asked his companions of "the firmest handhold of faith". They suggested different things like prayer and hajj. When t