God’s friend

Wael Farouq - The Qur'an relates that Abraham—“whom God chose for Friend” (Qur'an 4:125)—sat under the heavenly vault, seeking his sublime God. The planet Venus appeared. Enraptured by its beauty, Abraham said, “Behold my God!” However, when Venus disappeared, Abraham said, “I cannot love that which disappears!”

The full moon appeared, and Abraham said, “Behold my God, this is greater!” But when the moon also disappeared, Abraham exclaimed, “I cannot love that which disappears!” The sun came up, and Abraham, overwhelmed by its magnificence, said, “This is my God!” But when the sun also set, Abraham said, “I cannot love that which disappears!”

The point of this story is that sublimity, beauty, greatness, and magnificence have no meaning when linked to absence. They remain incomplete, completing themselves only with presence. But why presence? Abraham gives us the answer when he comments on the disappearance of Venus, the moon, and the sun—in other words, their absence. He does not say, “I cannot worship that which disappears,” but instead, “I cannot love that which disappears.” Abraham seeks love.

In the three Abrahamic religions, love is inextricably linked to faith. An oral tradition of the Prophet Muhammad recites: “None of you will believe until he loves for his neighbor what he loves for himself.” In the Bible, it is written: “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he sees, cannot love God whom he does not see.” Not to mention the famous commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

It is sad today to see many followers of the Abrahamic religions reducing them to pure doctrines, even though they are the fruit of their predecessors’ experiences of love. Many think that faith is the end of the quest, the conclusion of the road. In doing so, however, they deprive themselves of that beating heart, which alone is capable of actualizing and making present (if not even eternal) the religion that has existed since the beginning of time. This beating heart is the search for love. Without this quest, religions remain imprisoned in their past, because being unable to actualize them through our experience means giving up their presence.

Love is the condition of faith. Only those who love can believe. God is greater than what we know of Him. The true believer is the one who is moved by curiosity to know even more about God, propelled by the certainty that everything we can know about Him is written in our own hearts. The heart, however, is like the stone in which fire is latent: if you rub it, it burns; if you leave it alone, it dies out.

The stone burns on contact with another stone, and so does the heart. An individual alone, isolated, cannot know God. God is not known in isolation; the way to God lies in the hearts of others.

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The author has not revised the text and its translation.

Wael Farouq, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Arabic Language and Culture at the Faculty of Linguistic Sciences and Foreign Literatures of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan (Italy).

He was lecturer in Arabic language at the American University in Cairo from 2005 to 2016 and Straus Fellow 2011-2012 at the Straus Institute for the Advanced Study of Law and Justice (New York University). He authored several publications in the field of Arab-Islamic linguistic, literary and philosophical-religious studies, such as the monograph “Conflicting Arab Identities. Language, Tradition and Modernity "(Muta, 2018).