and in al-Tawbah He also says: “So uphold their treaty with them until their term is finished; indeed, Allah loves the God-fearing” ⦗al-Tawbah 9:4⦘; and: “So long as they keep faith with you, keep faith with them; surely Allah loves the God-fearing” ⦗al-Tawbah 9:7⦘; and in al-Ṣaff: “Indeed, Allah loves those who fight in His cause in ranks, as though they were a solid structure” ⦗al-Ṣaff 61:4⦘; and in Āl ʿImrān: “Yes! Whoever fulfils his covenant and is mindful of Allah—Allah loves the God-fearing” ⦗Āl ʿImrān 3:76⦘.
The deeds that Allah loves—from the outward and inward obligations to the recommended acts—are many and well known, and so is His love for those who perform them: the believers, the friends of Allah, the people of taqwā.
This love is real, as the Qur’an and the Sunnah proclaim, and as the early generations of the ummah, its leading scholars, the people of Sunnah and hadith, all the shaykhs of the religion, and the imams of the spiritual path have unanimously affirmed: Allah is beloved in and of Himself with a true love—indeed, the most perfect love. For He, Exalted is He, has said: “Yet those who believe are more intense in their love for Allah” ⦗al-Baqarah 2:165⦘. Likewise, He—glorified be He—loves what His believing servants love, and whatever is loved for His sake is genuine love.
The Jahmiyyah denied the reality of love on both sides. They claimed that love can exist only when there is some likeness between the lover and the beloved, and that no such likeness obtains between the Eternal and the created; on that basis they rejected divine love altogether.
The first to introduce this notion into Islam was al-Jaʿd ibn Dirham in the early second century AH. Khalid ibn ʿAbd Allah al-Qasri, the governor of Iraq and the eastern provinces, offered him as the sacrifice on the Day of ʿĪd al-Aḍḥā. Addressing the people, he said, “People, offer your sacrifices—may Allah accept your offerings! I am sacrificing al-Jaʿd ibn Dirham, for he alleges that Allah did not take Abraham as an intimate friend and did not speak to Moses directly.” He then descended and slaughtered him.
It seems that Jahm ibn Ṣafwān took this doctrine from him, propagated it, and after him the Jahmiyyah were named. Salm ibn Aḥwaz, the governor of Khurāsān, later executed Jahm there. The teaching then passed to the Muʿtazilah, the followers of ʿAmr ibn ʿUbayd, whose doctrine was made public during the caliphate of al-Maʾmūn, so much so that the leading scholars of Islam were subjected to trials and summoned to adopt it.
The root of this view comes from the polytheists and the Sabians—Brahmanists, pseudo-philosophers, and the innovators among the People of the Book—who claim that the Lord possesses no positive attributes at all. These are the enemies of Abraham the Friend, peace be upon him: they worship the planets, erect temples for the intellects and the stars, and in truth deny that Abraham was an intimate friend or that Moses was one to whom Allah spoke.
Yet khullah (intimate friendship) is the perfection of love that permeates the whole heart, as in the poet’s line:
You have threaded the pathway of my soul;
therefore the Beloved is called khalīl.
This is confirmed by the authentic report related by Abū Saʿīd from the Prophet (Allah bless him and grant him peace): “If I were to take anyone from the people of the earth as an intimate friend, I would have taken Abū Bakr as an intimate friend; but your companion….”