that which you have been worshipping—you and your earliest forefathers? Truly they are enemies to me, save only the Lord of all worlds.’

He likewise said, as recorded in Surah al-Anʿām, ‘I do not love those that set.’ And the Exalted also says in Surah al-Shuʿarāʾ: ‘On the Day when neither wealth nor children will be of any benefit, except to one who comes to Allah with a sound heart’—that is, a heart free of idolatry.

As for their claim that no correspondence exists between the contingent and the Eternal that could necessitate loving Him or delighting in beholding Him, this statement is ambiguous. If by correspondence they mean parenthood, that is indeed absent and their point is valid. If they mean that between the two there is no correspondence such as that between spouse and consort, eater and food, and the like, that too is correct. But if they intend that there is no correspondence sufficient to make one a lover and worshipper and the other the Beloved who is worshipped, that is the very crux of the issue, and to use it as proof is simply to assume what must be demonstrated; it suffices, therefore, to deny the premise.

Rather, no correspondence warrants perfect love except the correspondence that exists between the creature and the Creator—there is no god but He—who is God in the heavens and God on earth, and to whom belongs the loftiest description in the heavens and the earth.

In reality, the position of these people amounts to denying that Allah is truly the One worshipped. Hence certain groups of Sufi-minded theologians who deny that Allah genuinely loves have agreed with them: they concede that He is beloved yet refuse to affirm that He loves. They adopted Sufism while retaining the doctrines of those theologians, borrowing from the Sufis their discourse on love, though often in a confused manner. The root of this denial is in fact the teaching of the Muʿtazilah and others among the Jahmiyyah.

Concerning the Lord’s love for His servant, their rejection is still more emphatic. The deniers fall into two camps: one interprets His love as nothing but the very created effects the servant loves, so that His love is taken to be His act of creating them; the other equates it with His will for those effects. We have expanded on this in the principles dealing with the divine attributes and decree, and this is not the place to repeat it.

It is well established—by the Quran, the Sunnah, and the consensus of the early generations—that Allah loves and is pleased with whatever He has commanded, whether obligatory or recommended, even if it has not yet materialised; and that He may will the existence of things He hates and loathes among persons and actions, such as immorality and disbelief. Allah says in Surah al-Baqarah, ‘Allah does not love corruption,’ and in Surah al-Zumar, ‘He is not pleased with disbelief for His servants.’

Our purpose here is solely to speak of the servants’ love for Allah. It has become clear that this is the foundation of all acts of faith, and no dispute about it is known among the predecessors of the community—the Companions and those who followed them in excellence. They stirred this love by the very means Allah legislated for that purpose, through the various lawful acts of worship: faith-grounded knowledge and Qur’anic audition. The Exalted says in Surah al-Shūrā, ‘Thus We have revealed to you a Spirit of Our command; you did not know what the Book was, nor faith…’ until the end of the passage. Yet, as time went on, there appeared among the theologians—Muʿtazilah and others—those who denied this love; and among certain Sufis there arose people who sought to rouse it through new forms of audition