sheer misguidance. It resembles the claim of the Jews and Christians:

“We are the children of Allah and His beloved.”

Allah Most High said:

“Say, ‘Why then does He punish you for your sins? Rather, you are human beings among those He has created. He forgives whom He wills and punishes whom He wills.’”

His punishing them for their sins entails that they are neither beloved nor related to Him as children; rather, they are created beings subject to His lordship. When Allah loves someone, He sets him to doing what his Beloved loves; that person does not commit the disbelief, wickedness, and disobedience that the True One hates and is displeased with. Whoever commits major sins, persists in them, and does not repent of them—Allah hates those deeds of his, just as He loves the good that he does. For His love for a servant is proportionate to that servant’s faith and mindfulness of Him.

Anyone who thinks that sins will not harm him because Allah loves him, despite his persistence in them, is like someone who claims that taking poison will not harm him because he has a healthy constitution, even though he continues taking it and seeks no treatment for it. If this fool reflected on the accounts Allah relates in His Book concerning His prophets—their repentance and seeking forgiveness, and the various trials that befell them, through which they were refined and purified according to their circumstances—he would understand something of the harm sins cause those who commit them, even those of the highest standing.

Someone who loves a created being but neither knows nor seeks that being’s best interests, acting instead merely on the impulse of love—even when this involves ignorance and wrongdoing—thereby gives the beloved cause to hate him and turn away from him, indeed, even to punish him.