Seyyed Hossein Nasr

One of the greatest expositors in Islam of the meaning of love, Ahmad Ghazali, writes in his Sawanih that the greatest distinction of human beings is that God loved them before they could love Him, according to the well-known Qur’anic verse yuhibbuhum wa yuhibbunah, “He loves them and therefore they love Him.” The wa in Arabic, which usually means “and,” implies implicitly in this verse “therefore.”

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Originally published as part of W. Chittick, Divine Love: Islamic Literature and the Path to God. Republished here with thanks.