for what harms it, and this may even incline it to loathe what would benefit it. Infatuation (ʿishq) is a psychological disease; when its influence intensifies it can migrate to the body and become a physical illness—sometimes a disorder of the brain, such as melancholia, which is why some physicians call it an obsessive malady akin to melancholia, and sometimes a general bodily ailment marked by weakness, emaciation, and the like.

Here, however, our concern is the sickness of the heart, for it is the root cause of the soul’s loving what harms it. The case resembles that of a bodily patient who craves the very food that injures him: if he is denied it he suffers, yet if he partakes his illness only grows worse. So it is with the lover: contact with the beloved—seeing, touching, hearing—damages him, and even thinking about or imagining the beloved hurts him, yet he yearns for it. If he is prevented from his desire he is pained and tormented; if he attains it his disease is strengthened and his anguish increases.

In the hadith it is stated: “Allah shields His believing servant from the world just as one of you shields his sick person from food and drink.” Likewise, in the well-known supplication of Moses, related by Wahb and recorded by Imam Ahmad in Kitāb al-Zuhd, Allah the Exalted says: “I drive My friends away from the delights and ease of this world just as a compassionate shepherd drives his camels from ruinous pastures; and I keep them from its repose and comfort just as a compassionate shepherd keeps his camels from perilous resting-places. I do not do this because they are insignificant to Me, but so that they may receive their full share of My honor—safe and intact—untouched by the world and unquenched by desire.”

The sick man’s cure, therefore, lies not merely in the disappearance of his bodily ailment but in the removal of that blameworthy love from his heart.

People hold two opinions regarding ʿishq. The more common view is that it belongs to the realm of volitional desires; another holds that it stems from perceptions—that it is a corruption of the imagination whereby the beloved is envisioned as other than he or she truly is. Advocates of the latter say that, for this reason, Allah is never described with ʿishq, nor is it praiseworthy to imagine such a notion about Him. Some who follow the first opinion maintain that ʿishq may be ascribed to Allah because it denotes perfect love, and Allah loves and is loved. They cite a report from ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Zayd: “My servant continues to draw near to Me until he loves Me and I love him,” in another wording, “until he is infatuated with Me and I with him”—a phrasing adopted by some Sufis.

The majority, however, do not apply this term to Allah, for ʿishq signifies excessive, immoderate love that exceeds its proper bounds, whereas Allah’s love is boundless and therefore cannot be said to surpass a limit. According to them, ʿishq is blameworthy in every instance—whether directed toward the Creator or toward creation—because it is love that oversteps the due measure. Moreover, in common usage the word ʿishq is confined to a person’s passion for a woman or for a boy; it is not used for other kinds of love such as love of family, wealth, prestige, or love of the prophets and the righteous. It is also frequently coupled with unlawful acts, whether infatuation with a marriage-forbidden woman or with a youth, accompanied by forbidden gazing