Reclaim Your Heart

L
OVE IS IN THE
 A
IR
Love is in the air!
…Or at least that’s what advertisers want you to think in
February. While it’s nice to express your love often,
Valentine’s Day comes once a year, leaving you no choice
but to do so or risk seeming heartless. For the owners of
floral boutiques and chocolate shops, Eid comes in
February.
Yet, even amidst such commercialized affections, one can
hardly keep from thinking about those they love. And
while we do so, we are inevitably faced with some
pivotal questions.
I was reminded of some of those questions when I
reflected on something a friend of mine had told me. She
described how it felt to be with the person she loved. In
her words, the whole world disappeared when they were
together. The more I reflected on her statement, the more it
affected me, and the more it made me wonder.
As humans, we are made to feel love and attachment
towards others. This is part of our human nature. While
we can feel this way about another human being, five
times a day we enter into a meeting with our Lord and
Creator. I wondered how often we ever felt the whole
world disappear while in His presence. Can we really
claim that our love for Allah is greater than our love for

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anyone and anything else?
So often we think that Allah only tests us with hardships,
but this isn’t true. Allah also tests with ease. He tests us
with na`im (blessings) and with the things we love, and it
is often in these tests that so many of us fail. We fail
because when Allah gives us these blessings, we
unwittingly turn them into false idols of the heart.
When Allah blesses us with money, we depend on the
money rather than Allah. We forget that the source of our
provision is not and never was the money, but rather it
was the giver of that money. Suddenly we’re willing to
sell alcohol to avoid losing money in our business, or we
need to take out loans with interest to feel secure. In so
doing we are foolishly—and ironically—disobeying the
Provider in order to protect the provision.
When Allah blesses us with someone that we love, we
forget that Allah is the source of that blessing, and we
begin to love that person as we should love Allah. That
person becomes the center of our world—all our
concerns, thoughts, plans, fears, and hopes revolve only
around them. If they are not our spouses, we are
sometimes even willing to fall into haram just to be with
them. And if they were to leave us, our whole world
would crumble. So now, we have shifted our worship
from the Source of the blessing to the blessing itself.
Allah says of such people: “And [yet], among the people

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are those who take other than Allah as equals [to Him].
They love them as they [should] love Allah. But those who
believe are stronger in love for Allah.” (Qur’an 
2:165
)
It is because of this tendency to lose sight after Allah has
bestowed His blessings that He warns us in the Qur’an
when He says: “Say, [O Muhammad], ‘If your fathers,
your sons, your brothers, your wives, your relatives,
wealth which you have obtained, commerce wherein you
fear decline, and dwellings with which you are pleased
are more beloved to you than Allah and His Messenger
and jihad in His cause, then wait until Allah executes His
command. And Allah does not guide the defiantly
disobedient people.’” (Qur’an, 
9:24
)
It is important to note that all the things listed in the above
ayah (verse) are halal (permissible) to love and are, in
fact, blessings in and of themselves. In fact, some of those
blessings are signs of Allah. On the one hand, Allah says:
“And of His signs is that He created for you from
yourselves mates that you may find tranquility in them; and
He placed between you affection and mercy. Indeed in that
are signs for a people who give thought.” (Qur’an 
30:21
)
But on the other hand, Allah warns: “O you who have
believed, indeed, among your wives and your children are
enemies to you, so beware of them.” (Qur’an 
64:14
)
The warning in this ayah is critical. Our spouses and our
children are listed here because they are among the

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blessings we love the most. And it is in that which you
love most that you find the greatest test. So if conquering
that test means seeing through a storm of greeting cards
and roses to a greater love that awaits, then so be it. And
when could that be more relevant?
Because after all, love is in the air.

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