Pleasure, then, is something other than the act of eating or the mere sensation of taste; it is a distinct state that comes about through eating and tasting. A human being experiences it within himself, and no verbal description can convey it more clearly than the feeling itself. Every living creature senses within itself both pleasure and pain.

It is the habit of these people to compress many meanings into one: they claim that knowledge, power, and will are a single reality—indeed, that knowledge is identical with the knower, and power with the one who possesses it. In the same vein they make pleasure nothing more than apprehension. Yet in other contexts they do the reverse, splitting one thing into many: they treat the concrete realities that exist outside the mind as two entities, and the essential attributes inseparable from them as three constitutive elements intrinsic to their very quiddity.

What makes the error of their position plain is that pleasure never occurs without love; for whatever is not loved yields no pleasure when apprehended. Love for a thing is additional to the mere conception that precedes it, and likewise the pleasure derived from it is additional to the apprehension that is a prerequisite for pleasure.

Once this is understood, one knows that the Lord—exalted be He—is described in the Book and the Sunnah as possessing knowledge, love, joy, satisfaction, and other perfections, while the servant’s completion lies in coming to know God so that he loves Him, and then—in the Hereafter—in beholding Him and finding delight in that vision.

As recorded by Suhaib in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said:

“When the people of Paradise enter Paradise, a caller will announce, ‘O people of Paradise! You have an appointment with Allah that He wishes to fulfil for you.’ They will say, ‘What is it? Has He not already brightened our faces, made our scales heavy, admitted us into Paradise, and delivered us from the Fire?’ Then the veil will be lifted and they will gaze upon Him. Nothing He gives them will be more beloved to them than looking at Him—and that is the Increase (ziyādah).”

And in the ḥadīth of ʿAmmār ibn Yāsir, the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said: “O Allah, I ask You…”