Aslam

Hazrat Sufiyan Saori and Bashr Hafi used to say: Nobody except a person having doubts hates death, as a lover under no circumstances hates meeting with his beloved. Buwaiti asked a monk: Do you love death? When he delayed in his answer we said: If you are truthful, you will love death. Then he read this verse: If you are truthful, you will hope for death. The monk said that the Prophet had said: Dont hope for death. He said: There is harm in hoping for death and therefore he said this as it is better to remain satisfied with the decree of God than to flee away from it.

Question: Can one love God who does not love death?

Answer: Death is thought an evil on account of the attachment for the world and for the pangs of separation from

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family members, children, treasures and wealth. These are the impediments of the love of God as full love occupies the entire heart. If the above things are loved, love for God is reduced. When Abu Hazaifa got his sister Fatima married to his slave Salem, the Quraish began to rebuke him and said: You are a man of Quraish. How could you get your sister married to a slave? He said: By God, I have given Fatemah in marriage to him as I do not know whether I am better than Salem. The word was more severe to them than his deed. They said: How can it occur? She is you sister and Salem is your slave. He said: I heard the Prophet say: Let one who wishes to see a person who loves God with his entire heart look to Salem. It seems from this that there are persons who do not love God with all their hearts. They love God and love others also along with God.

The second cause of thinking death as an evil is that a man does not hate death in the early stage of his love but he does not like it before his preparation for meeting with God. He is like the lover who gets the news of the arrival of his beloved but wants to have an hour so that he may well arrange his house and its furnitures that he may get leisure to see him and talk with him after his arrival with pleasure.

(2) Second sign -to sacrifice dear things for Cod. The second sign of the love of God is to give priority to that work which God loves than all the dear things and for that to be busy with the difficult tasks, to give up low desires and idleness, to be busy with divine services to search God's nearness by additional divine services to hope for more position near Him. God bestows the quality of I'sar (self sacrifice) to His lovers. God says: They love those who have migrated to them and they don't see narrowness in'their minds in what they were given and place the wants of others above their own wants inspite of their wants. Low desires become the object of love of one who follows them. The lover gives up his own desires and adopts the desires of his beloved. For this reason a poet says:-

I want union with one who seeks my separation,