Believers vary in the degree of this love. But the hypocrites—those who outwardly profess Islam while faith has not yet entered their hearts—are not among them. Whenever seeing Allah is mentioned to a believer, he yearns for it with a longing he scarcely feels for anything else.

Al-Hasan al-Basrī said:

“If worshippers knew that they would not see their Lord in the Hereafter, their souls would melt away in this world.”

Love for Allah grows stronger through greater knowledge and a sound innate disposition. It diminishes through deficient knowledge and the corruption of that disposition by misguided desires.

There is no doubt that people love the pleasures of eating, drinking, and sexual intercourse. A person may be distracted from the greater of two beloved things by the lesser because his immediate need for the latter is so pressing. Someone who is intensely hungry, for example, may be distracted by the pain of hunger from the pleasure of communing with Allah in prayer.

For this reason, the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said in an authentic hadith:

“None of you should pray when food is before him, or while resisting the urge to urinate or defecate.”

This is so even though prayer is the delight of those who know Allah. A person longs only for beloved things of which he is aware. He does not long for what he is unaware of, even though, were he aware of it, his longing for it would be stronger than his longing for anything else.