Divine Love in Islam -

Love for Love's Sake

Rabi'a al'Adawiyya

It was told of Rabi`a that she was seen one day carrying a brand of fire in one hand and a pitcher of water in the other, and that she was running very fast. When they asked her what she was doing and where she was going, she said, "I am going to light a fire in the Garden of Heaven and pour water onto the fire of Hell, so that both these veils may disappear from the seekers, and that their purpose may be sure, and that the servants of Allah may see Him, without any object of hope or motive of fear! What if the Hope for the Garden and the Fear of the Fire did not exist? Not one would worship his Lord, nor obey Him. But He is worthy of worship without any immediate motive or need.


Everyone prays to You from fear of the Fire;
And if You do not put them in the Fire,
This is their reward.
Or they pray to You for the Garden,
Full of fruits and flowers.
And that is their prize.
But I do not pray to You like this,
For I am not afraid of the Fire,
And I do not ask You for the Garden.
But all I want is the Essence of Your Love,
And to return to become One with You,
And to see Your Face."

Two Kinds of Love


I love You with two loves-a selfish love
And a Love that You are worthy of.
As for the selfish love, it is that I think of You,
To the exclusion of everything else.
And as for the Love that You are worthy of,
Ah! That I no longer see any creature,
but in all these I see only You!
There is no praise for me in either of these loves,
But the praise in both is for You.

~Rabi'a Al'Adawiyya

One of her companions, Sufyan al-Thawri, asked her, "What is the best thing
for the servant to do who desires proximity to his Lord?" She said, "That
the servant should possess nothing in this world for the Next, save Him."

Rabi`a, may Allah preserve her secret, never had any doubts about her
Beloved being present or absent, because she was not concerned only to have
His good pleasure and bounties. She lived for a Love which does not seek
for any answer, reward or reciprocity.

It was related how one day one of her followers said in her presence, "Oh Allah, may You be satisfied with us!" Whereupon Rabi`a said, "Are you not ashamed before Him to ask Him to be satisfied with you, when you are not satisfied with Him?"

By this she meant that first we must be truly satisfied with Allah, Most High, before
we can ask Him to be satisfied with us.

Then this was followed by the question to her, "When then is the servant
satisfied with Allah Most High?"
She replied, "When his pleasure in misfortune is equal to his pleasure in
prosperity."

Someone asked Rabi`a, "What is Love?" She, may Allah be pleased with her,
said, "Love has come from Eternity and passes into eternity, and none has
been found in seventy thousand worlds who drinks one drop of it until at
last he is absorbed in Allah, and from that comes His words: "He loves
them, and they love Him." (5:59).

Once when she was sick a number of people went to visit her. They asked
her, "How are you?" She replied, "By Allah! I know of no reason for my
illness except that Paradise was displayed to me and I yearned after it in
my heart; and I thank that my Lord was jealous for me and so He reproached
me; and only He can make me happy again."

http://sufimaster.org/adawiyya.htm

Rabia's love, which was passionate (shawq) and all-consuming was also full
of humility, fear (hawf) and reverence (taqwa) for her Beloved, and when
she was asked about how she had such a degree of intimacy, she said, "By
constantly saying: I take refuge in You from everything which has
distracted me from You and from every hindrance which has hindered me from
You."

The Sufi Saint Rabia
Rabia al Basri

Habibun laysa ya'diluhu habib
wa-la siwahu fi qalbi nasib
habibunghaba 'an basari wa-shakhsi
wa-lakin 'an fu'adi ma yaghib

A beloved whom no beloved can equal
and for other than whom there is no share of my heart
is a beloved who is absent from my vision and my person
but who is present to my heart

(Rabi'a bint Ismail)

I have to find my Sufi Women's Poetry Anthology and then I will get back to this thread with more words of love for god from our muslim women.

I would like to see a painting of that. Islam is not big on iconography of course. Not sure if such a portrait exists- Rabi'a adorned by her "attributes," the torch and the waterpot.

Rabia, the great mystic of Basra, was renowned for her ethereal
beauty. Once a rich young man from Iran came to Basra. He was in
search of something unusual and out of this world. He asked people if
Basra had any such thing?"

"Yes," They all told him. "We have the most beautiful woman of the
world!" The young man naturally became interested and he asked for
her address.

And they all laughed and said, "Well, where else? In a brothel!"

That repulsed the rich young man, but finally he decided to visit
her. And when he got there, the matron asked for an exorbitant fee.
He paid the fee and was ushered in. There, in a silent and simple
room, a figure was praying. What beauty she had!
He had never seen such beauty and grace, not even in his dreams. Just
to be there was a benediction, and the prayerful atmosphere started
affecting him too. He forgot about his passion. He was entering into
another kind of space. He was drugged. He was turned on to God.

An hour passed and he felt he was in a temple! Oh, such joy and such
purity! He went on feasting on her beauty. But it was no more the
beauty of a human being -- it was God's beauty.

And then Rabia opened her eyes, those lotus eyes, and he looked into
them, and there was no woman in front of him - he was facing God. And
this way the whole night passed, as if it were only a moment.

The sun was rising and its rays were coming through the windows, and
he felt it was time to go. He said to Rabia, "I am your slave. Tell
me anything, anything in the world that I can do for you."

She said, "I have only one little request."

He asked, "What is it?"

Rabia says, "Never tell anybody what you have seen and experienced
here. Allow the people to come to me. This beauty is nothing but a
trap set for them. I use it as a door for them to enter God. Please,
promise me that you will never tell others what you have experienced
here tonight. Let them come to a whore and a brothel, because
otherwise they will never come to me."

"Oh!" he said, "So this is the secret of this city. The whole city
clamours after your beauty, yet nobody tells me about his experience."

Rabia laughed and said, "Yes, I extract the promise, this promise,
from all of them."

Rabia used her beauty as a trap. Buddha used his words as a trap.
Krishna used his flute as a trap. Meera used her dance as a trap. You
have to be trapped. And you can only be trapped in ways that you can
understand. You have to be taken from the known into the unknown, but
the beginning has to be in the known.

You understand passion. The young man was not in search of God, but
he became interested in a beautiful body, in a beautiful woman - and
was trapped. He had gone there because of his passion. Once he was
there in the presence of Rabia, the passion started changing - it
became prayer.

No, no sweet Anuraag - the fish does not understand the hook, the bull the flag, nor the tiger the pit or the butterfly the net.

Likewise the devotee does not understand Love
- and thus can never escape it .....

You might check out the article Seven Nafs- Seven Planes by Shaykh Ezra Ahmed Mushin describing the different levels of the nafs of which nasut is the 1st and lahut is the fifth.

He also starts to describe fana at the end, but then backs off. More information on Sufism can probably be found in the other lectures on the site.

I carry a torch in one hand
And a bucket of water in the other:
With these things I am going to set fire to Heaven
And put out the flames of Hell
So that voyagers to God can rip the veils
And see the real goal.

Rabi'a al-Adawiyya