Religion is lived by love and enthusiasm in heart

In the holy month of Ramadan, the blessings and the spirit of love of Islam is being felt deeply in believers’ hearts. It is very important that the blessings poured upon people by this spirit of love and faith does not remain limited to this one month alone but spreads to all our lifetimes. To accomplish this, we need to take every opportunity in speaking about love and encouraging peace.
Life becomes meaningful with faith and love. Allah loves to love and be loved and this is why He created the universe with love. We witness this fact everywhere and in everything. That the Earth accommodates so much artistry, the variety of colors, the aesthetics in nature, the beauty in animals are all the kindness and love Allah offers to His servants.
The enormous artistry in a tiny flower, the transition of colors on its petals are all out of the love Allah feels for His servants. The fragrance, the aesthetics of the fruits and vegetables Allah creates for us, the delicacy in their seeds, the way they are packaged are all again because of the love Allah has for us, His servants.
In the absence of love one cannot live by the religion in the true sense of the word. Love is obligatory upon human beings. In a person who has not placed this understanding into his heart, there exists an emptiness in his heart. Everything a Muslim does for the sake of Allah is based on love. The fear and awe one feels for Allah is again based on this love.
A believer avoids doing something that will not please Allah. This is what we call “fear of Allah.” This is similar to the case of a person who abstains from doing the slightest thing that will be disliked or that displeases the person he loves. He even takes precautions against the possibility of his being displeased. Similar to this, beneath the fear of Allah lies the love one has for Allah.
A person experiences religion in his heart. It is enjoyed with love, zeal, sincerity and with joy and enthusiasm. It is not imposed on a person by compulsion. That is why love of faith is the most essential and important issue.
Imagine a person who fulfills his regular prayers everyday, fasts, counts his beads and knows the Qur’an by heart but this person is cold towards other people. He is cruel and strict. He is not forgiving. He thinks that even the slightest mistake must be punished rather than changed for the good by gentle admonition. He does not like others and takes every opportunity to criticize them. However he is very meticulous about formalities. He knows the Qur’an but he does not put Its commandments into practice in his daily life. Such a person is distant to the spirit of the Qur’an, because Islam is love, understanding, compassion, being reconciliatory and unitary.
According to the Qur’an, it is obligatory upon Muslims to love one another. In the verses of the Qur’an, Allah speaks of His forgivingness, protectiveness and mercy. The 22nd verse of Surat an-Nur Allah reads: “...Would you not love Allah to forgive you? Allah is Ever-Forgiving, Most Merciful.”
Everyone definetly wants to be forgiven and pardoned, and deeply hopes for this. In the way that our Lord relates in this verse, it is essential for us to be affectionate, complementary and forgiving.
We already experience the nefarious consequences of this lovelessness. The Islamic world is disunited and disintegrated. There is a reason for this; the compassion, love, forgiveness, and protective spirit is not duly experienced. Islamic communities do not have a compassionate outlook towards one another and they do not approach one another in a brotherly spirit. People who are brothers in faith, who believe in the same Allah and His prophet have been detached from one another because of some differences in details.
It is evident that this is a sedition stirred up by anti-Christ, a satanic trap. Satan prevents Muslims from showing love and compassion, which is in the essence of religion, to one another. The way to deal with this sedition is to love one another and to become united. We need to put the spirit of cooperation and self-sacrifice that exists in the Qur’an into practice.
Our Lord says: “Allah loves those who strive in His Way in ranks like well-built walls” and thus informs us about the kind of love that is obligatory upon us. (Surah Saf: Verse 4)
We are the guardians of one another. Muslims are people with saint-like morality. They are the friends of Allah, His assistants and they are the people with superior morality that will distribute peace and justice to the Earth. So what is obligatory upon Muslims is their loving one another, their embracing one another and making alliance with one another. Thwarting the sedition of satan urgently and spreading the spirit of self-sacrifice within the Islamic world, and embracing one another without considering the differences in Islamic schools and Islamic communities is what is obligatory upon them.
In Surah Al ‘Imran Verse 103, our Almighty Allah commands to Muslims:, “Hold fast to the rope of Allah all together, and do not separate. …” It is obligatory upon us not to disunite, but to embrace one another, to cooperate, to support one another and put an end to the sedition in the ideological sense.
All around the world, Muslims are being martyred everyday. Poor women, little children and elderly people are being killed only because the compassionate and mighty spirit of the morality of Islam has not been secured and believers have not become united. But the solution is rather easy.
Allah creates destiny and He informs us about the keys to salvation. What we need to do is to place that key into the lock. This is to establish love, compassion among our brothers.
With the love that Allah makes obligatory upon us all, Muslims must set aside all kinds of separation and make alliance. Let us all hope that this holy month of Ramadan becomes instrumental for Muslims to attain those days when they have deeper love for another, become more compassionate and more restrained.
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The writer has authored more than 300 books translated in 73 languages on politics, religion and science.