Machine summary:
The book begins with the customary eulogy on God, but it differs from the usual ones in that it eulogises the Almighty as the creator of love which paves the path to the possession of the beloved and has set thereby the souls into motion towards perfection and directed the hearts towards the achievement of all that mankind has been created for.
A tradition relates that the Prophet seeing one of his companions strutting along between the battle-lines said, "Verily, this is behaviour displeasing to God except in such a place.
She retorted : By God, what's the use of such a lad To those loving words he can nothing add!" Ibn Qayyim adds a tradition from Abu Huraira-unreliable though many of the traditions related by him are--that the Prophet is supposed to have said: four things are never satisfied: The soil by rain, woman by man, the eye by looking, and the learned by study.
"The sight of beauty is the sight of God and His knowledge and love, and by no means the sight of the devil.
We return to our master, Ibn · Taymiyya , who boldly declares, "where has God permitted the forbidden looks, and the love of beardless youths and strange women," he exclaims.
Such drunken• ness is not only caused by wine, but by the love of money, or power, or outburst of anger, Chapter XIII "God does not permit any pleasure which is futile in this world.