Passionate love is a psychological sickness, and when its effects become noticeable on the body, it becomes a sickness that affects the mind also. Either by afflicting the mind by melancholy or the body through weakness etc.
The effects on the heart
The heart is afflicted with this love as it is harmed by its connection with the loved one, either by seeing, touching, hearing, or even thinking about him/her. And if one was to curb this love then the heart gets hurt and grieves and if one was to give in to the desire then the sickness becomes stronger and becomes a way through which the grievance is increased.
In a hadith
” Allah shelters His believing servants from the world just as one of you shelter your sick ones from food and drink 9that would harm them.)
The only cure for the sick lies in his removing the sickness by removing this love from his heart.
People are divided into two opinions concerning this passionate love:
1) One group says that it falls into category of intentions and wishes ,this being the famous opinion.
2) Another group says that it falls into the category of imagination and fantasies and that is a corruption of the imagination since it causes one to depict the one who is loved in other than his true reality.
And this is why Allah has not been described with passionate love (ishk) and neither that He passionately loves (ya’shik) because He is far removed from this, and one cannot be praised who has these corrupt thoughts.
Passionate love is love exceeding the proper bounds, as for the love of Allah has no end thus it can not exceed the proper bounds.Passionate love is blameworthy if it is directed towards the Creator or the Creation because is a love that exceeds the normal bounds.
The word passionate love is usually employed with regards to a man loving a woman (and vice versa), it is not usually employed in things such as the love of one’s family, property or status, just as it is not employed with regards to the love of the Prophets and the righteous.
Usually passionate love is a word usually mentioned alongside a forbidden action, such as loving a woman unlawful to him (and vice versa) and other possibly unlawful actions.
As for the love of a man whose love for his wife leads him to be unkind to his old wife , or do things to harm his religion, or oppress his parents , or oppress his children from his previous wife , as commonly happens – this man is outside the folds of justice and has left what is obligatory.
Thus a passionate love like this , is a sickness that corrupts the person by corrupting his intelligence and his religion and the damage caused by it nobody can assess except Allah swt.
Ref: Diseases of the Heart and their Cures
Ibn Taymiyyah
