The Shirk of Love (شرك المحبة)
Taken from Did Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibnul Qayyim Restrict Shirk to Shirk in Rububiyyah? A Response to Shaykh Hatim al-Awni:
Ibnul Qayyim elaborated quite extensively on Shirk of love in his writings, whereby he fleshes out the concept by highlighting that deeming something worthy of love wholly and unconditionally as an inherent right other than Allah is Shirk. In other words, as Muslims, our love for anything other than Allah is contingent upon whether Allah commands or approves our love for those entities. Though we love our parents and children immensely, there is eventually a finite limit to that love (e.g., a true believer would lose love for an individual who is exceptionally insulting and antagonistic toward Islam, we do not love every single thing about the people we love such as their sins, etc.).
Tawheed in love would entail that we unconditionally love Allah for Himself, that we love every single thing about Him, and that our love for anybody or anything must be through Him in that He either loves those things or approves of our love for them. To make another entity the central locus of our love and through which our love emanates would constitute Shirk of love.
Shirk of love can even be understood as a willful determination to love a created entity more than God. Imagine a person who says, “I know that I should love God for creating and sustaining me; however, He does not intimately interact with me and sacrifice to take care of me as my mother does. I feel my mother exerts so much effort to care for me while God takes care of me effortlessly. I cannot help but feel that because of my mother’s efforts, she at the very least deserves that I love nobody else more than her, including God Himself. Thus, that is what I will choose to do.”
Notwithstanding the kufr, this is a conscious and deliberate attempt to elevate one’s mother above God in terms of the worthiness of love. In addition to the kufr, this is Shirk in love, despite the person not attributing divinity to his mother but instead appealing to her toiling to take care of him to justify his decision to love her more than God. In this hypothetical scenario, the individual is not saying that he merely feels a greater intensity of love for his mother but rather believes that she is worthy of a more significant share of his love than God. This is because, in his distorted kufri understanding, the mother’s hard work offsets God’s effortless favors toward him
Or imagine the person who says, “I know God is my Lord, Creator, etc., and that my parents are not divine, but I feel that Allah is so distant, while I interact with my parents intimately daily. I cannot help but feel that I should love my parents more than God, and even though it feels wrong, I hope God would understand.
Or imagine another person saying, “I worship God purely out of fear. I do not feel it in me to love Him out of intimidation. I would be lying to myself if I said that I did not love my parents and children more than this God I am terrified of.”
And so on. Clearly, there is no Shirk in Rububiyyah at play here (despite the kufri distortions in Rububiyyah) in that the person is ascribing divine properties to created entities; nevertheless, there is clearly Shirk of love at play with such a willful determination to love a created entity more than (or even equal to) God.
Recommended Reading: