such as melancholia—which is why passionate love has been described as an obsessional illness resembling melancholia—or a bodily disease, such as weakness, emaciation, and the like. What concerns us here is “the disease of the heart,” for it underlies the soul’s love for what harms it. This resembles the condition of a physically ill person who craves harmful food: if denied it, he suffers; if given it, his illness grows stronger and worsens. Likewise, a passionate lover is harmed by contact with the beloved through sight, touch, and hearing. Indeed, even thinking about and imagining the beloved harms him, yet he craves all this. If denied what he craves, he suffers and is tormented; if granted it, his illness grows stronger, causing further pain.

It is related in a hadith:

“Allah shields His believing servant from the world just as one of you keeps food and drink from a sick person in his care.”

In the account of Moses’ intimate communion with Allah transmitted from Wahb, which Imam Ahmad narrated in Kitāb al-Zuhd (The Book of Asceticism), Allah Most High says:

“I keep those close to Me away from the pleasures and ease of this world, just as a caring herdsman keeps his camels away from deadly pastures. I keep them away from its comforts and easy living, just as a caring herdsman keeps his camels away from resting places where they would be caught unawares. This is not because they are insignificant to Me, but so that they may receive their full share of My honour, intact and undiminished, unscarred by the world and undimmed by desire.”

The sick person is cured only when his illness disappears—or rather, when that blameworthy love is removed from his heart.

People hold two views concerning passionate love: