True Love in God

Brothers and sisters, bearers of the guardianship of this existence, I love you in God.

I do not say it with pretence or flattery or in consideration of the circumstances of our meeting in its form, time and place, I say it with all faith and sincerity with myself and my creed. I love you in God, as the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) commanded us first to reveal our love to those whom we love, and he also commanded us that our love should be in God and for God. God Almighty says: “And I did not create the jinn and mankind except to worship Me” (Adh-Dhariyat 56) The worship of God can only be through knowing Him and loving Him. Loving God can only be through the love of His creatures and creations. The mystics have always repeated a true holy saying of the Prophet about God: “I was a hidden treasure; I loved to be known. Hence I created the world so that I would be known”, therefore, all creation is a result of the will of love.

I start by thanking the Association of True Life in God, and I thank Vassula and all the helpers and supporters for spreading love and working for love in a time when evil is growing among peoples and nations. They compete over the riches and the resources of the Earth and race for large armaments, motivated by self-love instead of the love of the other.  If they only taste what we have experienced from love for the other, not for self- interest, but truly, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them.”  (Luke 6:32)  Do you not feel the role of these teachings that took us from being passers-by in this life to being lovers of existence, this eternal existence that requires us to be eternal in our truth since we are unable to be so with our bodies?  Our bodies’ life is short, but our truth is as immortal as the immortality of the divine truth. And, without eternity, we cannot achieve the intention of the Holy Koran in carrying the guardianship (Trust) of existence: “Indeed, we offered  guardianship to the heavens and the earth and the mountains, and they declined to bear it and feared it; but man [undertook to] bear it. Indeed, he was unjust and ignorant.” (Al-Ahzab 72)

I am used on the podium of “True Life in God” not to be traditional.  For this reason, I say to you today that the entire system of this world that has been established by wars, and the balance of power throughout history has failed to preserve human dignity on the face of the earth, because the powerful and those who control the resources of the world are not interested in the conservation of existence and in performing the guardianship.  They are only interested in preserving their own interests; and rather than being compassionate towards the weak and poor nations, we see them exploiting them wherever they find a way to do so. Hence, the importance of our meetings in this form and in this diversity and under the title of “love and getting to know each other”.  I thank the supporters very much because, by doing this, they prove that they are advocates of goodness in these times.  I invite them to persist and persevere.  I also call on associations and organisations to move more towards spreading love and engaging in the search for fairness and peace for humanity, in order to give nations their rights instead of brokering political peace based on the sharing and distribution of interests. If I allow myself to dream in front of you, I will only dream of seeing armies of love that would recruit their knights to do good and build and promote peace, instead of seeing the armies of states and governments that commit violence by implementing policies of greed in order to defend those policies and prevent peace.  They go to extremes to create threatening and controlling methods and sophisticated scenarios of mass extermination of other armies under the pretext of self-defence.   

Sheikh Daneel Abdul Khalek, Druze, Lebanon