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As-Salaam alaikum, According to Sayyadi Ibn Arabi, may Allah be Merciful to him, there are 3 causes of love. The first is beauty (al-jamal). He narrates the hadith, "God is beautiful and He loves beauty". (Muslim) He further explains that God loves beauty because it is one of his self-quintessential Attributes (sifat-dhatiyya) and one of the Most Beautiful Names..al-asmau'l husna, which is the 'Beautiful' (al-jamil). Whoever falls in love because of beauty, only fell in love with God in reality.
The second reason the Sheikh mentioned as reason behind love is beneficence (Ihsan). He says that there is no beneficent in reality except God, because He is the 'Beneficent' (al-Muhsin) and Ihsan is the result of His Attribute and Divine Name al-Muhsin. Therefore if anyone fell in love because of beneficence they fell in love in reality only with God.
Thirdly, the Sheikh referred to the hadith-qudsi of the supererogatory prayers (nawafil). He sees these nawafil as additions (ziyadat) upon the mandatory prayers (fara'id), which are comparable to the existence of wujud. In other words, he relates the nawafil prayers similarly to the added existence (ziyadat fi al-wujud) on the primary existence of the Absolute Reality (wujud al-haqq), which is God. He added that God similarly loves the world as a supererogatory (nawafila) additon (ziyada) to His own necessary (fard) existence. (Ibn Arabi: Al-Futuhat Makkiyyah, Cairo, 1911).
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