Rabiʾ al awwal Day 29 | “Love the beloved ﷺ, because he loves you…”
Love for the Prophet ﷺ is in truth pain, but it is such a sweet pain that you want more and more. Loving the Prophet ﷺ will break your heart; you will yearn to be with him ﷺ, speak with him, just sit and look at him ﷺ. It is this very love that caused his companion Abū Bakr as-Șiddīq to die early, he died from a broken heart, he couldn’t stand to be away from the Prophet ﷺ, he would weep for him ﷺ. It is this very love that made ‘Umar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb lose his mind, he said he would cut anyone’s head off that said the Prophet ﷺ was dead. It’s this very love that caused his beloved daughter, the master of all women, Fāṭimah (as) to shed tears when hearing he would die, but she laughed when she heard she would join him. It was this very love that at first drove Bilāl al-Habashī away from Madīnah after the Prophet ﷺ demise, but then made him return too. It’s this very love that turned the murderous heart of Fudhala into one that overflowed with love for the Messenger of Allāh ﷺ within a fraction of a second. It is however important to remember that this love is not limited to human souls, what of the tree that wept when the Prophet ﷺ took to the pulpit?
I could go on, and on with more examples, but I think you get my point.
They all loved him ﷺ, and we all love him ﷺ because he ﷺ loved them and he ﷺ loves us. Often it is said that we complete our dīn when we marry, but we forget that our status as a believer is complete only when we love Muḥammad ﷺ more than our wives, our children, ourselves, more than anything.
And how can we cannot love him ﷺ? Our entire understanding of Islam is because of him ﷺ, our realisation of Allāh comes from him too. We are because he ﷺ was, and still is.
There was a man by the name of ʿAbd Allāh, he would often become so drunk that he had to be brought staggering through the streets before the Prophet ﷺ to be sentenced for public drunkenness, and each time, the Prophet ﷺ would rule to have the prescribed punishment carried out. This was a common occurrence, after one such episode once ʿAbd Allāh had left after being sentenced, one of the companions declared,
“O Allāh curse him! How often he is summoned for this!”
The Prophet ﷺ rebuked that Companion, saying: “Do not curse him, for I swear by Allah, if you only knew just how very much indeed he loves Allah and His Messenger.” [Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī]
He ﷺ loved us dearly, so much so that it is difficult to comprehend and fathom. He ﷺ yearned to meet us. It is through his intercession that some of us will enter heaven. Countless aḥādīth exist about the importance of loving him ﷺ, and his entire life is a tribute to how much he loved us. He ﷺ would stand all night in prayer for us, he went to the highest heavens several times asking Allāh to lower the number ṣalāh incumbent on us. He was always thinking and praying for us.
His concern and love for us is stated in the Qurʾān:
“A Messenger has come to you from among yourselves. Your suffering is distressing to him; he is deeply concerned for you; he is gentle and merciful to the believers.” [9:128]
He ﷺ isn’t just concerned for us, he is deeply concerned, to such an extent that it distresses him, it hurts him ﷺ.
When we can find ourselves in a moment of weakness, a moment where you feel utterly inadequate, as if you don’t matter, you feel alone; it is at this time that we should remember that the Prophet ﷺ prayed for us with an overwhelming sense of love, mercy, and selflessness.
“Our love for the Prophet ﷺ hasn’t even reached the required threshold. How can some say it’s exceeding the limit?” -— Ḥabīb Alī al-Jifrī
“The title of the Holy Prophet of Islam is Ḥabīb-Allāh, the Beloved of God, love for the Prophet ﷺ could be described as the great transformative emotion of Islam.” -— Shaykh ʿAbd al-Ḥakim Murad
_
اللهم صل وسلم وبارك على سيدنا ومولانا محمد خير البرية، وعلى اله في كل لمحة ونفس عدد ما وسعه علم الله