joy or sorrow. The sweetness of faith—with the pleasure and joy experienced by the believer who tastes it—follows from the perfection of the servant’s love for Allah. This involves three things: perfecting this love, extending it, and repelling its opposite.
“Perfecting it” means that Allah and His Messenger are dearer to him than all else. Merely possessing some love for Allah and His Messenger is insufficient; rather, they must be dearer to him than all else, as explained earlier. “Extending it” means loving another person solely for Allah’s sake. “Repelling its opposite” means detesting the opposite of faith more than being cast into the Fire.
If loving the Messenger and the believers is part of loving Allah, and Allah’s Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, loves the believers whom Allah loves—because his love for Allah is the most perfect of all people’s, and he is the one most worthy of loving what Allah loves and hating what He hates—yet no one other than Allah has any share in his “intimate friendship,” and he even said:
“Were I to take anyone on earth as an intimate friend, I would take Abū Bakr as an intimate friend,”
then it is clear that intimate friendship holds a higher rank than love in general.
And (the point) is that “intimate friendship” and “love for Allah” fulfil servitude to Him. Those who err in this matter do so only because they imagine that servitude is merely abasement