To be is to love

Abstract

Although critics of Sufism have sometimes presented a vision of Islam in which love of God does not have a central place, a semantic field of love is indeed present in the earliest Islamic textual sources and has been further developed by Sufis. This study of key terms and their interrelationships—terms such as raḥma, shukr, maḥabba, wudd, ‘ishq, and irāda— demonstrates the central role that this semantic field has in Islam. Although rooted in the Qur'an and Sunna, the semantic field of love was substantially elaborated upon by Sufis such as Ḥallāj, Rūmī, and Miyān Muḥammad Bakhsh. In particular, their works illustrate how the term ‘ishq (intense, passionate love) represents a development in the semantic field of love in Islam, demonstrating that ‘ishq as a part of the nature of love is an integral component of Islam.