Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam (Studying Qur'an & Hadith Book 2)

by A. Helwa

“This Qur’an is the rope of Allah, and it is the clear Light and Healing. It is a protection for the one who clings to it and a rescue for the one who follows it. It is not crooked and so it puts things straight.”37 PROPHET MUHAMMAD

We are called not to just read the Qur’an—but to become a manifestation of its message. We are called to be a mercy to all the creations of God, by bringing light where there is darkness, feeding the hungry, forgiving those who wrong us, taking care of the orphans, being generous to the needy, being kind to our parents, and through sincere worship becoming a vessel of God’s unconditional love for the entire world. It is not how much of the Qur’an we read or memorize, but how much of it we internalize that makes a difference. After all, the Qur’an was not sent to passively inform our minds; rather, it was sent to actively transform our hearts. Oh Allah! Open for me the flood gates of the Qur’an. Let its words wash me of all illusion, let its light swallow all the darkness that surrounds me, and allow its healing power to mend the broken places within me. Oh Allah! Make the Qur’an my faithful companion on the straight path to You. “My Lord! Cause me to enter whatever I may do sincerely and cause me to leave it sincerely and grant me supporting authority from Your presence” (17:80). In Your powerful names I pray, Ameen.

“Islam can be summarized in three sentences: Be with the Creator, without creation. Be with creation, without ego. Wish for others what you wish for yourself.” SHAYKH ZAKARIYA AL-SIDIQQUI

Islam is not only a religion, it’s a way of life that can physically, mentally, and spiritually transform a believer. God did not send the Prophet Muhammad to begin a new religion; rather, He sent him to reignite our relationship with the Divine.

Many people make the mistake of thinking that religion is the means by which human beings seek God. The truth is, Islam is a journey of unveiling the secret that God is and has always been with us. We may not be able to perceive God directly, but He is reflected in everything.

“Islam is to testify that there is nothing worthy of worship except God and that Muhammad is the messenger of God, to perform the ritual prayers, to pay the purifying alms, to fast in Ramadan, and to make the pilgrimage to the Sacred House if you are able to do so.”4 PROPHET MUHAMMAD

The word islam means “to surrender, to submit” and comes from the triliteral root sin-lam-mim, which also can mean “well-being, completion, freedom, and peace.” Linguistically, then, the word islam can be said to mean “to surrender in peace,” for it is only when we submit as a servant to God that we are liberated from the enslavement of our ego.

“Iman is to believe in Allah, His angels, His books, His messengers, the Last Day, and to believe in destiny both its good and its bad.”10 PROPHET MUHAMMAD

“If you were to rely on Allah as He should be relied on, He would provide for you as He provides for the birds. They go out early in the morning hungry and return in the evening full.”12 PROPHET MUHAMMAD

In the Qur’an, Allah says that He “guides to Himself whoever turns to Him” (42:13). The cultivation of faith begins with praying to God to open our hearts to experience His love. By His wisdom, God guides whom He wills and those who desire to be guided. It is not God but our egos that are the barriers to faith. We find it difficult to trust in God because we are relying on ourselves instead of on God.

It is important to understand that just as there’s no magic pill to obtaining the physical body we seek to have, there is no shortcut to becoming spiritually strong.

The secret to walking the path of Islam is not in pretending to be perfect, but in proclaiming your weaknesses before God. When you understand that it is your deficiency that creates the space to experience God’s generosity, you come to see that God calls you to Him through your humanity and fallibility. Sometimes we have to fall on our backs before we face the heavens. Sometimes we have to be broken before we seek God to mend our hearts. Sometimes we have to become sick before we call upon the Healer. God is not forsaking you, God has not forgotten you—rather, your Lord is calling you, through your pain and struggle, to rely on Him in a deeper way.

In defining ihsan, the Prophet famously said: “It is to worship God as though you are seeing Him, for even if you cannot see Him, you know that He sees you.”16 PROPHET MUHAMMAD

Ihsan is a state of goodness which is independent from the creation and seeks no reciprocity or applause. When someone is living in a state of ihsan they see the creation as nothing but a reflection of the Creator. In a sense, then, ihsan has two main dimensions: being consistently present, and being God-conscious in all of our states. A Muhsin or one with ihsan is constantly striving to be present with whatever face God meets them with moment to moment. A Muhsin is not only constantly turning to God for guidance through prayer and remembrance, but also constantly seeking opportunities to serve God’s creation. To be in a state of ihsan is to know that God is everywhere by His knowledge, that He is reflected in everything by His names, and that His love is the breath behind all that exists.

When all of existence becomes a mirror for God, every place becomes sacred, every voice becomes revelation, every face becomes a reflection of God—making every moment a chance to witness the Divine and to be witnessed by the Divine. Whereas islam focuses on outer actions, and iman focuses on inner certainty, ihsan is the world of intention, where all that we do is for the sake of God alone. As the Prophet said, “Actions are rewarded in accordance with their intentions,”18 meaning that the more sincere our intentions, the more valuable our actions of submission to the will of God become.

It is only when we surrender our body, mind, and soul to God that we will be able to manifest the true message of peace that exists at the heart of the path of Islam. We are not called to follow Islam, we are called to become it.

Oh Allah, I do not seek to worship You from fear of pain or for longing for pleasure, but I seek to worship You for Your sake alone. My Lord, help me surrender my will within Your will. Help me move without resistance on the rivers of Your decree. Oh Allah, help me surrender to You like the seas, the moon, the stars, the mountains, and galaxies. Please help me to surrender to You like the leaves in the breeze. Allow me to give You all of myself by removing the veils of doubt and fear. Allah, guide me on the path of truth and help me dedicate my life to You alone. I pray that You make my heart grounded in the fertile soil of faith. Allah, please always remind me that only in You will I find peace, ease, and the keys to the innermost secrets You have hidden inside of me. My Lord help me be humble, honest, kind, and faithful as I walk this path You have paved from You to You. In Your supreme names I pray, Ameen.

When you wake up in the morning, take a few deep breaths and bring your awareness to your heart. Before getting out of bed try saying, “Oh Allah, You are The Awakener, Al-Ba’ith, thank You for giving me another chance to love, worship, and surrender to You more completely. As I get out of this bed this morning, help me step deeper into my faith and to feel the peace that comes from proximity to You.” • Before brushing your teeth, you can say, “Oh Allah, You are The Most Generous, Al-Karim. As I brush my teeth, may You allow the words of my mouth to spring from Your source of love, peace, and kindness. Allah, help me purify my tongue from the remembrance of anything other than You.” • When taking a shower, try saying, “Oh Allah, You are The Most Pure, Al-Quddus, as I wash my body may I also wash away the mistakes of the day and my forgetfulness of You. May the blessing of water unveil the purity of my soul, allowing me to receive the light of Your mercy.” • When putting on your clothes, you can say, “Oh Allah, You are The Provider, Ar-Razzaq, as I dress my body with clothes that you have provided for me, may You dress my spirit with the cloak of holiness and light.” • Before eating try saying, “Oh Allah, You are The Nourisher, Al-Muqeet, thank You for this food before me, may this food serve to strengthen my body and keep me healthy and energetic to make my worship of You passionate and infused with love.” • Before driving or getting on public transport, you can say, “Oh Al...

“Oh son of Adam, so long as you call upon Me and ask of Me, I shall forgive you for what you have done, and I shall not mind. Oh son of Adam, were your sins to reach the clouds of the sky and were you then to ask forgiveness of Me, I would forgive you. Oh son of Adam, were you to come to Me with sins nearly as great as the Earth, and were you then to face Me, ascribing no partner to Me, I would bring you forgiveness nearly as great as the Earth.”1 ALLAH

Rumi says, “Water says to the dirty, ‘Come here.’ The dirty one says, ‘I am ashamed.’ Water says, ‘How will your shame be washed away without me?’” Even if we keep making the same mistake or falling for the same temptation, God calls us to keep seeking the cleansing waters of His mercy. Do not listen to the voices that say you are too imperfect for a perfect God, that you are too filthy to be cleaned, or too horrible to be redeemed—no matter the life you have led, your mistakes or sins can never be greater than God’s mercy.

As the great scholar Imam Al-Ghazali said, “Half of the weight of the spread of disbelief in the world is carried by religious people who made God detestable to His creation through their terrible conduct and terrible speech.” Our calling is not to judge people, but through love to inspire them toward their greatest potential. “Treat people with ease and do not be hard on them; give them glad tidings and do not make them run away.”9 PROPHET MUHAMMAD

Forgiveness happens when you choose to see a person for their innate goodness, not their manifested evil—choosing to see someone for who God created them to be, rather than defining them by their worst actions. Responding to someone who wronged you by wronging them would be like trying to put out a wildfire by pouring gasoline on it. As the civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”10 Forgiveness is not just about freeing another soul from the cage of their mistakes, but also about freeing ourselves from the prison of blame and judgment. When we forgive others, we are releasing ourselves from the burden of someone else’s transgressions.

We must learn to forgive ourselves for the things we did not know, before we had the opportunity to learn them. Everybody has perfect vision when they look back in hindsight, but if we want to move forward we must learn from the past, not live in it.

Nonetheless, it is important to point out that you can never force someone to convert or accept the message of Islam. The merit and value of faith comes from a human being’s freedom to choose whether or not to accept what God has already given to them. This is why the Qur’an very clearly states, “There is no compulsion in religion” (2:256).

“Whoever believes in Allah—He will guide his heart.” QUR’AN 64:11

There is a hilarious and profound story of the comical Mullah Nasruddin that beautifully depicts the notion that we human beings are a treasure chest and the gems of faith reside within us, not outside. One night, Nasruddin was crawling on hands and knees under a street lamp outside his house when a few of his neighbors came over and asked him what he was doing. The Mullah replied, “I have lost my keys and I am trying to find them!” His neighbors decided to help the Mullah search for his keys. After about 20 minutes, one of his neighbors asked, “Oh Mullah, do you remember the last time you had your keys?” The Mullah very confidently replied, “Yes! I was in my house.” The neighbors all confusingly looked at each other, until one of them asked, “Then why are we looking for them out here on the street?” The Mullah casually replied, “Because the light is better here. My house is dark this time of night.” The Mullah then stood up, looked each confused neighbor in the face, and then profoundly said, “How often do you search out in the world for the keys you carry inside of you? Don’t travel the Earth in search of answers that are already in the treasure chest of your heart. The question and the answer come from the same place. Have the courage to dive inside, there are many keys and pearls awaiting to be discovered.”

When we take multiple forms as our god, we experience a constant state of chaos, because where there are multiple wills present there is friction, creating a lack of harmony (21:22).

begin by declaring the nonexistence of everything else in creation. When we experience periods of loneliness or hopelessness, asking why people always have to leave, why nothing lasts forever, why everything around us feels like an illusion, we are in a state of la ilaha, which is a holy part of the process, so long as we keep walking to illa Allah.

One way of understanding the value of this emptiness in relationship with la ilaha illa Allah is through the letter Alif. In Hebrew, Alif is often a silent letter that holds the structure of a word together. In Kabbalah or Jewish mysticism, they say the Alif is the nothingness that holds together all of existence.

He is not just a messenger, but an embodiment of the message—a “walking Qur’an,” a full moon reflecting the sun of divine oneness.3 He is the epitome of what it means to actualize the human destiny of being simultaneously the humble servant of God and His chosen divine representative on Earth. It is through following his example that we can distinguish truth from illusion.

The Prophet was not sent as a king to rule the world, but rather sent to be like the humble Earth—a safe place for those who were afraid, a guide for those who were lost, in service of those who were poor, and an inspiration for those who were hopeless. He was not sent to make bad people good; rather, he was sent, like spring, to bring the dead seeds of faith back to life through divine mercy and light.

Since the Prophet is seen as fully human and not God, his humanity creates a bridge of understanding between his life and the lives of all human beings. If you have ever been an outsider, a refugee, a stranger in a land that is not your home, know that the Prophet intimately knows how that feels, as he was exiled from his home due to his belief in one God. If you have ever lost someone you love and the grief is shattering your heart, know that the Prophet knows how you feel, because he lost the love of his life, Khadijah, and all of his sons at a young age. If you were born an orphan or lost your parents later in life, know that the Prophet has felt the silent weight you carry, because he lost his father before he was born and his mother died when he was six. If you have ever felt rejected by your friends or family, know that the Prophet was verbally and physically harassed by his neighbors and close relatives. If you have ever felt in the heart of your soul that you were sent to this Earth for a purpose that those around you do not understand or support, know that the Prophet also struggled for many years before the message of divine mercy began to be accepted. The Prophet knows what it feels like to be where you are, and he has reached the peaks where you seek to be. In your greatest successes and in your most devastating failures, take the Prophet Muhammad as your guide because the example of his life is a compass that will lead you to a paradise of contentment.

The Prophet was sent to teach us how to purify the heart from the lower qualities of the ego, such as jealousy, envy, greed, lust, and arrogance through the practices of repentance (tawba) and remembrance (dhikr). The Prophet taught us that what we see in the world is a reflection of what we carry within us, and so in order to transform our lives we must transform our hearts. If we do good deeds but have a rotten heart, we are in a state of hypocrisy. If we have a good heart but do not do good actions, then we are in a state of illusion.

The prophetic role of inspiring unity and peace through the light of wisdom is beautifully illustrated in the following story narrated by Rumi: A wealthy man gave a single gold coin to four strangers, with the instruction that it should be shared amongst them. The first man, who was Persian, said, “I want angur!” The next was an Arab, and she said, “I want to buy inab!” The third man was a Turk and said, “I don’t want angur or inab, I want uzum!” The fourth was a Greek woman who said, “I don’t want any of these things, I want stafil!” Since none of these four strangers spoke each other’s language, they started to fight. A wise man who spoke many languages came across the four people arguing and asked if he could help. When the four strangers told him in their different languages what had happened, the wise man smiled and said, “Ahh, well, I can satisfy the desires of all four of you with one coin. Trust me and I will make your one coin seem as if it was four, and your four desires will be unified together.” Rumi then tells us, “Only a person of such wisdom would know that each in his and her own language wanted the same thing: grapes. Many cultures, ideas, and religions, have many things in common, but they are not aware of it.”20

We do not worship the messenger, we worship the One who sent the message, because whereas all human beings will one day die, the light of God’s message is forever.

“All that is in the heavens and all that is in the earth glorifies God, The King, The Holy, The Mighty, The Wise.” QUR’AN 62:1

Allah says, “I have not created the invisible beings and humankind except to worship Me” (51:56). The purpose of our creation is to know, love, and ultimately worship our Lord, through becoming an instrument of His unconditional love. The salat is like an antenna that tunes our awareness to the station of divine love that is continuously being broadcast into our universe.

“Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn’t matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again, come, come.” RUMI

The salat shines a light on the mental idols we carry with us that we struggle with surrendering to God: whether it be obsessing about what people think of us, trying to manage our schedule for the day, thinking about how we will pay our bills, or how we can be more successful, all the distractions we experience during prayer are places in our life where God is calling us to surrender to Him.

The famous physicist Albert Einstein proved with his theory of relativity that time is relative. Einstein’s theory says that, as an object gets closer to the speed of light, time slows for that object.6 A single ray of light traveling through space is in an eternally present moment with no past or future. If we were to somehow enter into a wave of light, time would stop. This is why whenever we sincerely connect to the presence of Allah, who is known as “The Light of the heavens and the earth,” time begins to expand (24:35).

The mystic Rabia Al-Adawiyya speaks to this place of inner unity when she says, “I kneel in the universal temple of my heart and I pray at the altar where walls and names do not exist.”

My Lord, help me to honor the holiness of prayer and to turn to you in my greatest successes, my most painful failures, and every moment in between. Oh Allah, whether I am in the deepest valley or on the highest summit, “My Lord! Truly, I am in need of whatever good that You bestow on me!” (28:24) Oh Allah, help me to never lose sight of Your love and to never stop seeking Your guidance and help. In the words of Your beloved Prophet , “Oh Allah, help me to remember You, to thank You, and to worship You in the best of manners.”27 My beloved Lord, please help me continuously align my heart to You. Oh Allah, please help me be mindful of You before, during, and after all of my prayers. Oh Allah, please be patient with me; please keep calling me back toward You; please keep opening the doors to Your mercy and keep tuning my ears to the calls of Your guidance. In Your sacred names I pray, Ameen.

As the mystics say, “Before you speak, let your words pass through three gates. At the first gate, ask yourself, ‘Is it true?’ at the second ask, ‘Is it necessary?’ and at the third gate ask, ‘Is it kind?’”

Words have power, which is why Imam Ali says, “Speak only when your words are more beautiful than the silence.” After all, everything in existence sprouted from the vibration of the divinely uttered word “Be!” (36:82). So remember, your tongue is like a knife; it can either kill like the sword of a samurai or save like the scalpel of a surgeon.

Aside from giving charity when the need arises, Muslims that are financially capable are asked to donate at least 2.5 percent annually of their net worth, known as zakat, to the poor, as a means of preventing widespread poverty. Unlike sadaqah, zakat must be given specifically to one of the following eight categories of people: the poor, those who are in a state of difficulty, those who disperse the zakat, those whose hearts are in need of reconciliation, to free people from bondage, to help people who are in debt, to support those who are striving to establish peace in the name of God, and to those who are struggling while traveling in foreign lands.

In the ancient Indian text, Upanishads, it profoundly says, “There is enough in the world for everyone’s need; there is not enough for everyone’s greed.”

Bounteous, The All-Knowing” (2:261). We are also reminded in the Qur’an that we are only asked to give according to the capacity that Allah gave to us: “Let him who has plenty spend from his plenty. And let the one whose provision is measured spend from what Allah has given Him. Allah does not charge a soul for other than what He has given. Allah will bring about ease after hardship” (65:07). It is the small steps we take today that become miles tomorrow; acts done with love and consistency create revolutions of kindness and light that overthrow the forces of darkness.

“Listen, oh drop, give yourself up without regret, and in exchange gain the ocean. Listen oh drop, bestow upon yourself this honor and in the arms of the sea be secure. Who indeed should be so fortunate? An ocean wooing a drop! In Allah’s name, in Allah’s name, sell and buy at once! Give a drop and take this sea full of pearls.” RUMI

Zakat and sadaqah are ways to empty the ship of our heart from the weight of greed, attachment, and stinginess. The one who spends his wealth not for honor or praise, but rather to purify himself before God, is the one whose ship of faith will stay afloat. As Allah says, “He who spends his wealth in order to purify himself, not as payment for any favors received by anyone, but only seeking to gain the pleasure of his Lord Most High, and indeed he will eventually be satisfied” (92:18-21).

A king was once walking through a plantation, when he noticed an old man with a white beard on his knees planting some seeds. He walked over to the man and said, “My kind father, what are you doing?” The old man smiled innocently and said, “Hello, my dear majesty, I am planting tiny date palm saplings.” The king surprisingly replied, “But, father, doesn’t it take twenty to fifty years for date palms to bear fruit?” The old man smiled as he replied, “Yes, my majesty, that is correct.” The confused king asked, “Will you ever be able to eat the dates from the trees you are planting?” The old man sweetly replied, “I will surely never reach the age to enjoy these fruits, my majesty. But I have eaten dates from trees my fathers planted but never tasted, and so by God’s mercy I too plant for those who come after me to one day enjoy.” The king was so touched by the old man’s words that he gave him a bag of gold coins. The old man replied, “I have yet to even plant these saplings and they have already blossomed with fruits of abundance. What is done in the name of God is beyond seasons and time, He surely answers instantly!”