Page 101 - Romanticism: A Weapon of Satan

The Idea of Romantic Love

Because such people cannot value God the way He should be
valued (Qur'an, 39:64-65), they direct their feelings of love, either to
themselves, or to other people: to their fathers, sons, brothers and
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sisters, wives, husbands, girlfriends and boyfriends, people they look
up to as examples or people they are attracted to. The list can be very
long. Some people may even direct their feelings of love toward
inanimate objects, or even toward abstract concepts. Things such as
money, property, a house, a car or false ideals such as position, rank
and power, may be idolised. In short, adoration which is not guided
by faith, is part of the sin of idolatry or ascribing divinity to other than
God. Because this love is not wisely directed toward God, it is a
romantic love. In the Qu'ran, God says that this kind of love will bring
no advantage, and that real benefit is to be found in His sight:

To mankind the love of worldly appetites is painted in glowing
colours: women and children, and heaped-up mounds of gold and
silver, and horses with fine markings, and livestock and fertile
farmland. All that is merely the enjoyment of the life of the world.
The best homecoming is in the presence of God. (Qur'an, 3:14)
We must love all these things as creatures of God, and realise that
He has merely bestowed each of them to us as a blessing. Human love
is a particularly wonderful feeling that God has created. In the Qu'ran,
it says that God created human beings in "the best of forms."
Therefore, it is necessary for a believer to nurture an inner love for
those who are worthy of it; those who are obedient to God and who
have a good character. The true love that a believer feels cannot be
compared with the kind of love common in societies that are without
religion; it is a sublime, deep inner feeling.
In the following pages, we will look at those people who cannot
experience this sublime feeling, which is a blessing given by God, and
focus our attention on the relationships between men and women,
where love has tended to give rise to the most frequently encountered
kind of "idolatry."