what is love?

What is love?

If we will give the definition of love, I do believe that we will get thousand or million definitions according to how people feel about love. Surely, people will give different definitions, some people define the love that “ love is to give to each other, some define that love is romantic, love is the pleasure of self, love is the sacrifice, love is the beauty” and so on. And some people give the meaning of love that “love is the darkness, love is the calamity, love is the life obstacle, love is the ugliness, love is the lie” and so forth. Hence, we can see that people have different feeling about love as the definitions above.

            Anyhow, we are human being; we should know whom we are giving the love to, who should we love, especially Muslim. Muslims have been taught by Allah and The Prophet Muhammad (SL) to know how we should love and who we should love. Islam teaches us to love The Almighty God Allah as the first of anything. How to love Allah is to follow whatever he commands and abandon whatever he forbiddances. Second of all, we have to love the Prophet Muhammad (SL) how to love  him is  also to obey whatever he said because his saying is nothing axept the truth and revelations from Allah. We also have to omit what he had forbidden.  We have to follow his way or his Sunnah and we have to say much of Salawaat- to pray for him. Next, we have to love his companions because they were the best nation and the best people next to the Prophet. They were very close to him, helped him and sacrificed everything for Islam the messenger of Allah. Then we have to love to the books of Allah especially Al-Qurraan. The way to love the Qurraan is to read, to recite, to memorize, to understand and follow what had mentioned inside.

            After of all mentioned, we also have to love our parents. Among them we should love our mother more than father because in the life of the Prophet, once, a companion came to prophet and asked him that who should we love after Allah and you (Prophet)? Then the Prophet answered “mother” and again the companion asked that who should we love after that? The Prophet answered “mother” until three times then the Prophet said father. That is the evidence shown that we should love mother more than father. And then we have to love our brothers and sisters in our family by helping and visiting to each other.

            Another importance point is we have to love ourselves. Hot to love to love ourselves is be just to ourselves, do not destroy our health whether directly or indirectly because it is forbidden by Allah. Love ourselves for Muslim means to keep away from the Hell of Allah. That is the most importance for loving ourselves. Allah mentioned in the Al-Qurraan that “you do not die axept you will die in the status of completely Mu’min.” Then we have to all of human being especially brothers and sisters in Islam. The Prophet said that Muslims are brothers and sisters. How to love them is to help them and do not be trouble for them. And the last one, we have to love the creations of Allah such as animals, threes, rivers, mountains and so on. We have to be kind with them; do not destroy them because we get a lot of benefits from them whether directly or indirectly. And we must remember that they always praise to Allah and never betray him.

            Thus, the definition of love can be many meanings according to people’s feeling and understanding. And for Muslim people the love has been taught by Allah and the Prophet to let the people know how love should be. And I do believe that if we understand the word “love” according to what Islam teaches us, we will never give the definition of love in the negative way.