Zaynab Ansari – What is Love
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AI: Transcript ©
We'll begin with our first speaker,
Zainab Ansari Abderazak
is a native northerner with nor a southerner,
sorry, with northern roots. She spent several years
studying the core Islamic sciences, including Arabic jurisprudence,
Quranic recitation and commentary,
hadith and prophetic biography in Damascus, Syria at
Abu Nur Abu Nur Masjid's college preparatory program.
Upon her return to the United States, she
continued her Islamic studies privately with sheikh Khalil
Abdul Rashid,
imam of, New York's Iqra Masjid, sheikh Faraz
Rabani, educational director of Secrets Guidance, sheikh Jamaluddin
Haisah, and doctor, Fariha Khan, assistant professor of
religion and anthropology at Willamette University.
From 2004 to 2009, she volunteered,
answered questions, and taught for City Path Academy.
She currently answers questions for Seeker's Guidance Answers
blog,
writes for Aziza Magazine's Dean department, and volunteers
with the Islamic Speakers Bureau of Atlanta. She
did her undergraduate work in history and Middle
Eastern studies and is planning to pursue a
master's degree in world history at Georgia State
University in the fall. She is married and
has 3 children. Without further ado, I invite
Salazar Zainab to the stage.
I wanna first of all,
start off by,
thanking,
brother Ahmed Salim and Al Farooq Masjid for
organizing this event. Hopefully, the audio is okay.
Are you able to hear me? Alright.
So, you know, thank you very much, brother
Ahmed and the, masjid. I mean, I think
it's really as I was saying to my
husband, you know, when other people are kind
of getting their crunk on Saturday night, you
know, alhamdulillah, we're at the masjid. So there
is a lot of blessing in this gathering.
So just to keep it real, honestly.
SubhanAllah. This is,
I think, we need to and I'm gonna
be touching on this, but we really need
to all thank Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala for
the gift of iman because it's a gift
that
these days seems to be kind of in
in some sense shrinking,
as we look around us. So,
and also just wanted to acknowledge the fact
that my mom, sister, Kafi Ansari, and my
dad, brother Mansoor Ansari, are in the audience.
And, you know, without them having
encouraged me and my sister to study many
years ago in Damascus, you know, I probably
would not be able to
share these few things with you that I
learned from my teachers.
So just to clarify something, brother Ahmed,
I'm actually not looking to pursue a master's
degree. I'm in my last semester of coursework,
so Duaaz requested that I actually finish everything.
And quite importantly, I'm really honored to be
kind of sitting on this panel
with my husband
and talking about this really kind of relevant,
apt topic of love in Islam. So, alhamdulillah,
I think this is a pretty awesome gathering.
So I'm really not gonna speak long, and
please forgive me. I will be using notes.
You know, as a mom,
I'm not as quick on the uptake as
I used to be, so I kind of
need notes when I do this kind of
thing. But there are really just two points
that I wanna make,
tonight in reference to our topic,
love in Islam, is that, first of all,
we really kind of have to look at
this from the perspective of faith.
I mean, you know, the whole idea behind
this panel is Valentine's Day
was day before yesterday.
So this idea of romantic love is just
sort of like, you know, awash in the
air. It's what people think about. It's what
being it's what's being pushed by the popular
culture.
You know, and in many ways,
you know, since we are kind of products
of our environment,
especially for those of us who haven't gotten
married.
You know, we're sort of looking at love
through the lenses of the media and the
press and popular culture. So in many
in many ways, our views of romance and
relationships are really kind of fashioned by, you
know, those those those impressions. And my husband
will talk more about the impact of media.
But what I'm really arguing for is that
we have to kind of stand back and
assess
what we know about love from the perspective
of faith.
And how when love is discussed in the
context of our religious teachings,
in the context of the Quran,
in the context of the sunnah,
very rarely is the conversation of love sort
of decoupled or detached from,
a discussion of responsibility,
a discussion of piety, and a discussion of
obedience.
So when we talk about love,
it cannot be detached and divorced from
the responsibility
sort of underpinning that love. So a good
example might be perhaps,
the ayah. This is ayah 31
in Surat,
Adi Imran, which occurred to me.
Right?
So this is basically Allah ta'ala God most
high revealing to the prophet, tell the people
that if you really do love Allah,
then do what? I e, if you love
Allah, you know, there is some kind of
condition
predicated on that level of Allah. You have
to follow it up with something, some level
of responsibility, which is fatabironi,
obey the messenger, follow the prophet's pattern in
his sunnah and his tradition,
and then what will come after that, in
turn, Allah will love you and forgive you
your sins because Allah ta'ala is forgiving and
most merciful.
So we have this Quranic discussion of love
and it's centered all around,
love of God that's sort of predicated on
loving the person that God
sent to, you know, humanity with this divine
message.
And by following
that sunnah, by bringing by bringing, honestly, one's
inclinations,
one's hawa in accordance with the sunnah, then
the love of God and the forgiveness of
God descend. I mean, that's a really beautiful
concept.
And I think the reason why
that kind of appeals to me is that
if we kind of think about love and
relationships in terms of responsibility,
that really kind of elevates the discussion.
Right? It it takes it away from the
narcissism the sort of the narcissism that we
see in the society,
where love is all about, okay, what am
I gonna get on Valentine's Day? And what
am I gonna get on my birthday? And
when I get married, you know, what kind
of maher can I collect?
And, you know, these sorts of things.
It kind of takes away from me, me,
me, and and it's all about me to
what can I do
for that other person so that I might
become beloved of that person? And most importantly,
how can I become
sort of beloved of Allah through that person?
Right? As one of my teachers explained to
me in Damascus, and we make du'a for
the victory of the Muslims in Syria, is
that,
you know, you always in in essence, you
it's sort of you always have sort of
a triangle. Right?
You know, this idea of this kind of
really sort of esoteric,
way of approaching the divine and loving Allah,
you
know, kind of outside of your relationships,
just doesn't really make sense, especially for women.
She said that we have all these opportunities,
and my this is a sheikha, that you
have all these opportunities
to get to the love of Allah around
you, but just just look at the people
who are positioned in your life. Right?
So how are you with, you know, your
spouse, and how are you with your children,
and how are you with your parents, for
example? I mean, it
it's it all goes through that level of
responsibility,
you know, towards that person. So I just
wanted to make that point. It's point point
number 1. Do not decouple the conversation. And
this is really directed towards people who are
just starting out on this path of relationships.
Don't decouple the conversation
from one about responsibility
and one about sort of,
giving as opposed to taking. Right? It needs
to be more about sort of mutual fulfilling
of one another's rights
as opposed to sort of a taking.
And then the second point I wanna make
is based upon a hadith of the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. This is really nice.
It's, in the books of Bukhari and Muslim,
and it comes from Anas who said that
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said there
are 3 things which if these three things
are present in a person,
that person that person will attain the sweetness
of faith.
That God and his prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam should be ahab,
more beloved to that person,
right, than anything, anything and everything else, than
all else. And that that person should love
others for the sake of God alone,
and that that person should hate to return
to Kufr
or disbelief after Allah had rescued him from
it,
much as that person would hate to be
cast into a blazing fire. So basically, this
hadith talks about sort of the 3,
ingredients
for iman. And not just sort of,
a very sort of,
I guess, one could say,
default or base level or baseline level of
iman, but a more highly evolved level of
faith
where truly that person's Iman is dearer to
them than everything else,
where they're not willing to compromise their faith,
for example,
based upon a bad relationship. Right? And we
see that happening often in our community.
A marriage sours, for example,
especially in the case of women, and they've
left the the faith.
Or, you know,
for example,
a partnership goes awry. People are working together,
and because of that, they become disillusioned with
Allah ta'ala.
You know? So this idea of our iman
being being so being sweet to us, and
what this means is that in
essence, this person actually sort of finds some
type of,
I think some of the commentaries mentioned they
actually find a a pleasure
in being a person of faith. And the
analogy they make is just sort of the
sweetness that one,
senses on his or her tongue when they
taste honey. That literally their faith becomes sweet
and dear to them. You know, something that's
really beautiful about this hadith, and sometimes it's
hard to get it until Allah kind of
places people in your lives that are maybe
challenging to love, is this idea of loving
someone for the sake of Allah. And when
I first heard this hadith some years ago,
I said, well, it doesn't really sound very
romantic. What does it mean that you love
someone for the sake of Allah only? Does
it mean that you don't care for that
person for their intrinsic traits?
What does this mean exactly, love for the
sake of Allah? And then, you know,
some years later, I mean, I honestly just
through sort of the
experience of getting married and, you know, we're
coming up on our 10th anniversary, Insha'Allah,
and having children, you know, you realize that,
sometimes it's really easy to love someone and
sometimes it can be really challenging.
And this hadith is probably about when it's
more challenging. Right? Because when someone is nice
to you, when someone is good to you,
when someone
basically does nice stuff for you, you're gonna
like that person. But conversely,
when someone is difficult to get along with
or you feel that someone is sort of,
you know, say there are things that you'd
like to do and your parent is sort
of saying, no, you can't do those things.
So you see obstacles in your path.
You know, if there are personality clashes, for
example, within the context of a marriage, if
you're experiencing a generational divide between you and
your children, I mean, in those instances, it
can become really difficult to love the person.
Right? And then all you sort of see
is that,
you kind of see the person's problems and
the person's bad qualities, and you kind of
forget about all the good stuff this person
has done. It's it's at that time when
you really kind of need to, like, you
know, seek recourse through this hadith and think
about the fact that this is love for
the sake of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. And
what what does that mean?
This basically, like,
there's a saying attributed to Yahya ibn Mu'az
that this type of love for the sake
of Allah Ta'ala,
it's not
conditional.
It's really there aren't any strings attached. So
if in the case of the person's,
sort of beneficence or generosity to you, your
love doesn't grow. And in case they pull
they sort of that, you know, their goodness
towards you shrinks
or they become sort of dry
or, or aloof towards you, that your love
doesn't doesn't diminish. So this is love based
upon
this factor of transcendence, which is really Allah.
That's what elevates your love. And it I
think it's really helpful for those of you
who are thinking about getting married, you're in
marriage talks, you're newlyweds.
You know, you really kind of have to
think about love in those terms. You know?
It might not be the case, for example,
if you're a woman, you might not always
be able to provide the nafakah
or the the maintenance or the level of
living to which your customer that you would
desire. Right? In the case of men,
you know, you might find that once you
and your wife have children that, you know,
all of a sudden she's exhausted and her
attention towards you is not what it used
to be when you first got married. You
know? You're gonna find things coming out about
each other's personality.
You're going to encounter challenges.
And the thing to understand is that as
long as you attach
your love for that person to Allah, subhanahu
wa ta'ala, that you can that will help
you to continue to love that person through
the difficult times.
You know? So that, you know, as Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala says in the Quran speaking
about,
the way he reconciled the hearts of the
mohajrin and the ansar,
you know, this it's a gift. Just like
iman is a gift, the love that is
placed in your heart for someone
that's a challenging person to love, this is
a gift from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. You
know, because look at our culture. Look how
much romantic love and I hope someone's keeping
time.
Okay. Look how much romantic love is sort
of extolled. Right? This idea of sort of
meeting meeting somebody and, you know, eyes meet
across the room and, you know, then, you
know, we're told then there's this spark. And
I've had someone tell me, well, you know,
if I don't feel love, you know, if
I my heart doesn't thump, thump, thump when
I see the sister, that means it's that
we're not gonna have any
success. You know, that's not what what it's
about. I mean,
that type of image of love that's being
pushed is very shallow. It's very surface. And
honestly, it's just sort of predicated on what's
gonna be a very fleeting physical attraction.
Once the reality,
you know, of life sets in, then you're
gonna need something a lot more,
sort of sustaining and transcendent and real
to sort of get you through everything. And
you're gonna find that those feelings of excitement
that you had in the engagement processors in
Newlywed,
those feelings, inshallah, are gonna transform to something
that is sort of, much more
moderating. And that's the thing about these texts
that's so beautiful. You know, this this idea
of loving Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala,
you know, obeying the prophet to, sallallahu alayhi
wasallam to attain Allah's love, this idea of
loving someone for loving someone for the sake
of Allah and cherishing your faith. The whole
idea is to sort of develop a human
being
who's following that path of moderation. Right? They're
not embracing excesses
in their emotional attachment because the danger
of sort of embracing this this excess is
that if the person does you wrong, then
you're not gonna wanna do anything good for
them in return. Right?
That intense love that we see in our
culture, you know, where people are madly in
love and the media follows them around, and
then a few months later or a couple
years later, they can't stand each other.
And sadly, that even happens in the Muslim
community. I mean, that people think that they
they're in love, and before they know it,
that love is sort of transformed or is
morphs into this incredible, intense hatred. And as
Muslims, we definitely need to avoid those sort
of extremes. And it doesn't mean that you
don't love, you know, your husband or wife
or children, you know, with with all your
heart. I mean, you know, human beings are
we're social people. We're we are created to
form attachments and bonds. But it means that
that those feelings are moderated so that when
that love might wane or, like I said,
when that person is difficult to love, then
you're brought to the remembrance of Allah,
and you can moderate your response, and you
don't violate that person's right.
And who can remind me of that hadith?
You know, there's a really beautiful hadith,
of the prophet where he talks where
he talks about
why you should marry your daughter to someone
who has,
I think it's why you should marry your
daughter to someone who has piety? Why is
that? Why the emphasis on piety?
Real piety.
I think, you know, it's the hadith that,
you know, basically because if he
loves,
you know, your daughter, then he'll do right
by her. Right? But because he has piety,
if for some reason
there is no love in that marriage, at
least he won't oppress her and take away
her rights. So again, that idea that that
love, it's transcended. It's it's attached to Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala and it's imbued with the
sense of responsibility
towards the other person. So those are really
are, you know, the points they wanna make.
I'm not sure how we're doing for time.
5 minutes? Okay. So there are a couple
things, inshallah, that I'll,
add to that,
in terms of,
in terms of love. And this
actually comes from, sort of a
presentation where I looked at the prophetic view
of marriage. So,
the prophet
as we know, said that when a person
marries,
they have fulfilled half of their religion,
so let them fear a lot regarding the
remaining half. And there's a lot of sort
of commentary and discussion on what does it
mean to have fulfilled half of your deen
by entering into this relationship.
What it means essentially is that if you
go into this marriage,
right, and
half of your religion is taqwa, then the
other half is what? The other half is
building and sustaining relation relationships
that are moderated by this taqwa. And this
kinda gets me pa back to my point
about love for the sake of Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala. You're going into this marriage hopefully
with the idea that you're gonna create an
attachment with this person that you're marrying and
with their family members. Inshallah,
you know, you might be blessed with children.
And,
you know, with each one of those relationships,
there is an attendant set of responsibilities.
And there's no way that you're gonna be
motivated in the context of that marriage to
carry out your responsibility
unless you have an equal measure, I. E.
The other half is tuck up because that
is what keeps you going. Right? That at
the end of the day, you're accountable to
a loss
for
did you give that person their rights or
did you take that person's rights away from
them? So those are some important points to
remember.
And then the definition
of marriage, I think this is, important to
think about as we discuss love and loving
for the sake of Allah. You know, if
we want I think the ultimate example of
sort of romantic love is really the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. I mean, that's why
his sunnah is so unique because we see
in his relationship with each one of his
wives, the mothers of the faithful,
may Allah be pleased with them, is that
he had a certain level of love. And,
like, for each wife, when he was with
that wife, she felt as if she was
the most beloved to the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam. And with each wife,
a different aspect of the prophet's personality
was brought out. But sort of overall,
you see in the model of prophetic marriage
this idea of the Koranic description of love,
which I think is the most beautiful,
that they are your garments and you are
their garments. I mean, that's how love functions.
Love functions so that you act you basically
act as a support for that person. You're
protecting that person.
You're bringing out the best in that person.
And the only way you can do that
is with, again, a healthy measure of taqla,
a lot of patience, and a lot of
love. And as we saw in the, in
the prophet's marriage, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, he
was infinitely,
patient with his wives.
And even when they kind of pushed him
to the very limit and you think this
is a situation where it's difficult to show
love, still the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
showed love and forbearance.
So I think there is a lesson even
for those who sort of are really kind
of you know, for them, it's just romantic
love and that's all they're kind of that's
all that's on their radar. Look at the
example of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
and how he went through those different stages
of relationships
with his wives. He had wives who were
older and wives who were younger.
And, you know,
each one of those, mothers of the faithful
brought out different aspects of love from the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, but all of it
was joined by the fact that his heart
was attached to the divine and their hearts
were attached to the divine. So jazakumu khayr
for your time and attention. Assalamu Alaikum Rashmatullahi
Barakatuh.