WHAT IS THE
MEANING OF THE HADITH THAT SAYS
"LOVE OF THIS WORLD IS THE SOURCE OF
ALL ERROR"?
QUESTION: They
say that the saints and possessors of
perfection abandoned the world. It even
says in a Hadith: “Love of this world
is the source of all error.”10
Whereas the Companions were very involved
in the world. It was not abandoning the
world, some of them were ahead of the
civilized of that time, even. How is it
that you say that even the least of such
Companions was of greater worth than the
greatest saint?
THE ANSWER: It
has been proved decisively in the Second
and Third Stopping-Places of the
Thirty-Second Word that to love the face
of the world which looks to the hereafter
and that which looks to the Divine Names
is not the cause of loss, but the means
to perfection and attainment, and however
far one goes in those two faces, the
further one goes in worship and knowledge
of God. The world of the Companions was
in those two faces. They saw this world
as the arable field of the hereafter, and
sowed
and reaped it. They
saw beings as the mirrors of the Divine
Names, and gazed on them yearningly. As
for the transience of the world, that is
its transitory face, which looks to
man’s base desires.
____________________
10. al-Munawi, Fayd
al-Qadir, iii, 368, No: 3662.
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