The Misconception of Attachment Visited

A short reminder about humanity

“Truly, those who believe & perform righteous deeds – for them, the Compassionate One will ordain love.” {19:96}

بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمنِ الرَّحِيمِ

It’s been an intention of mine for quite some time now to address an issue that’s been prevalent among the younger generation: that of attachment to others. I made it a point and promise to myself a long time ago to find the truth behind existence and one aspect directly related and led me to the matter of human relationships. With that said, I’ll make this a brief piece and to the point. I’m not going to make it into a huge explanation, but simply clarify a view point that would allow you to do your own search and see what you come up with.

As a person fascinated by theology and psychology, I found myself constantly visiting religion and human behavior as my main field of study for nearly 10 years. From this learning experience, I’ve been blessed with gaining a considerable amount of information and insight into the most vital points of human nature and it’s relation to religious development around the world. And one of the most fundamental facts I’ve consistently come to recognize is that people need each other inherently to survive, to grow, to be truly human. And this is no better achieved than through attachments and by forging genuine bonds in relationships.

There are many people today, especially among the religious youth, who are constantly torn between their natural instinct to build bonds with others versus detaching themselves from all in the name of God, but which is more subtly motivated by pain. What we have to understand is this: attachments are natural, they are healthy and they are needed in order for us to function properly as a species, as a society, and as souls. We’re often told by quite a few people, many among them being religious advisers and counselors, that, “You are hurt because you attach yourself to people. You only need God,” or, “Don’t expect anything from anyone and you will be free,” or “Sever bonds that do not service your ambitions.” But are we truly hurt for simply committing an act fundamental to life? Free from what, being loved? Why are we creating bonds for our own ambitions and desires? Are we truly that selfish to assume the cause of our pain is simply caring for others? Or does that signal to something deeper regarding the condition of our souls?

I make a point to address all of these questions in various pieces of my writing, such as addressing the matter of Companionship in Islam and Focusing Faith for the Hereafter. Here, I’ll only address one point that will allow you to hold onto a piece of advice about recognizing the human condition in terms of attachment. I’ll start with a personal story.

A while ago, I visited a psychiatrist after one of the most heartbreaking events of my life. I was suicidal, destroying my health in every way, and exhausted in ways nothing could cure. The man I visited was renowned, one of the best in the state, and especially skilled in dealing with people who went through traumatic relationships of all sorts. We spent hours talking and I poured my heart out. His reactions, though, were interesting. He started off as any psychiatrist would, as a doctor, asking me questions to pass a diagnosis so he could better cater a program that would help me. But as he went on, for every question he had, I gave the textbook answer until he ran out of ways to diagnose me. It was like a game and he eventually recognized that I was a student of psychology and exceptionally educated in the field with personal experiences. So, he decided to get a little creative and had me open upon about my life, my relationships and my behavior in relation to them. It became a friendly debate; he would suggest relevant details to the situations I’ve dealt with, but I had already noticed and assessed them. He made connections between what led me to be as I am from what he could perceive, but the patterns were old news to me. He then started to advise multiple and various routes to better deal with my life and what I could do to become healthier. One by one, I pointed out the flaws in each plan because I had already applied them. He was impressed and then asked me why I had come if I already knew what the process was. I admitted that I had hoped he could prescribe me something that would keep me focused on everything else but the pain. He said that he could, but he already knew, as I did, that I wouldn’t take the drugs. I valued my ability to think clearly. And that’s when he made the connection: what would inevitably break me would also be what eventually keeps me going. He finally caught up to my train of thought and realized where I was at. He knew nothing would help me except what I had already been doing: remaining lovingly committed. So, he cried. He apologized and wished there was something he could do to ease the pain. It was like watching a doctor give his final condolences to a dying patient. He wanted me to come back, to try to work it out with him, but the results would be the same and the conclusions he came to in an hour, I could figure out about myself in 10 minutes. So, I went on to keep doing what I always did. I stayed dedicated.

It was at this point and several instances after that where I realized I wasn’t going the wrong way. I was fighting to stay human. I was fighting to keep feeling reality. To understanding humanity. To remain committed to the people I loved, because I loved them for a reason beyond the temporary. And that’s where I become sure that my understanding of attachments wasn’t flawed just because they came with pain, even a pain as incessant and immense as my own. I just had to keep reminding myself of their true meaning and higher purpose over the heartbreak. And this is where Islam kicked in for me. My own personal supply of a miracle drug that’s existed in humankind since it began: faith.

That’s the point of this reflection: Islam teaches us to have faith, not simply in a Compassionate God or Prophets of the best characters, but in ourselves, in humanity. Attachment is something Allah created among us to form bonds of strength. I won’t compare this to metaphors like, “Strength is found in a bundle of sticks, not one stick,” or, “You are a brick, I am a brick, and bricks that stick together make a strong wall.” I have a severe dislike for objectifying allegories and their incredibly lackluster morals. I stopped comparing people to things a long time ago because souls are not objects. People are not flowers or cups of tea or diamonds or lollipops or prizes. People are humans; living beings. A living creature is a being no inanimate object can compare to. Even a bee’s life is worth more than all the gold in the world. Did you know that if the bees die out, humanity will cease to exist? All of nature will stop pollinating, and without trees, we’ll have no oxygen to live on. It’s because of Allah’s creation of insects that pollinate, bees being the kings and queens of spreading such a miracle, that humankind can exist. We depend on such tiny, yellow insects for our survival. We are attached to bees. We have to be. But they’re dying out now, solely because of deforestation by humans who stopped caring about remaining close to nature. It’s because we severed our bonds of attachment to Allah’s blessing of nature that we’re about to bring to an extinction the very creature through which He keeps us alive. But we don’t think of this, we think of ourselves. “What am I getting out of it?”

That’s why I can’t stand objectification. We make chasing, clutching and hoarding of inanimate things like money and luxurious houses, and temporary pleasurable concepts like lust and power, into our life goals. We’d rather treat our handbags and wallets as friends, while treating people like banks and sewers. This all comes from an egocentric view of the world, that we are the center of everything and what we desire comes first. And we do this the most with people. We’d much rather use and then cut off the people who are good for, to us, and with us in order to decorate our homes, our bodies and our names rather than to preserve the precious bonds we forge with them that keep us beautiful, healthy and noble in the most lasting of ways: love. You cannot attain love in your heart without attachment. It is necessary, by all scientific and philosophical accounts. It is impossible to truly even begin to love anyone without the ability to form that connection. A bond of loyalty, of commitment, of dedication. We can’t even keep the bees alive because we’ve severed our attachment, the roots, of our care for them. Without attachment, mothers would abandon their babies before they even began breastfeeding. Many do, because they’ve dried out their minds, hearts and souls from forming any real bonds with any creature. How many fathers walk out on their families? Society teaches men to do this, believe it or not. To be ruthless and unemotional and distant from others. To “not be weak” by showing any true, lasting affection for their loved ones, let alone humanity. We teach men this. Now we’re teaching everyone this. We’ve been in an “Age of Individualism” since the 90’s. This global trend of putting yourself above all else, even the bonds that were the greatest factor in your growth. Until our generation started to be called the Generation of Narcissism. We’re losing our ability to connect with others.

And it’s all perpetrated by a slogan of: detachment from people, attachment to materialism. Materialism, at least in Islam, isn’t just chasing money. It’s chasing arrogant power, it’s chasing physical vanity, it’s chasing greedy consumerism, it’s chasing cultural status, it’s chasing using people until they serve your purposes. And then it’s cutting out your own humanity and filling it with the shallow. It’s to fill your heart, not with an attachment to God or His creatures, an act of divine love through God, but to things, to objectifying ideas, to identifying yourself, not by your bonds to the living, but clinging to the forever dead. There’s a reason why the Prophet ﷺ said, “If the world, to Allah, was equal to a gnat’s wing, He would never allow the disbeliever to have a sip of water from it,” [Tirmidhi]. If you don’t know how small a gnat is:

It’s those annoying little bugs that swarm like a cloud outside in the summer. It’s wing is nearly weightless. Now how important do you think the objects, temporary pleasures and ambitions of this world is if the wing of that little bug is worth more to God, Himself? So why are we chasing something that worthless at the expense of not only our own souls, but the souls of others?

When the greatest figures in Islam told us to detach ourselves from the Dunya, they never said anything about people. They only reflected on what it meant to chase the mirage of the world and to follow along with those who did just that. Souls are not of this world to begin with. We started out coming from a place above Heaven itself, and then falling from Paradise, because we started to lose sight of what was important when we entered Jannah. There’s a reason why Allah commands us to be good to every sort of person we come across. There’s a reason why the Prophet ﷺ said he was only sent to guide us on a path that excelled moral character and that good character was first about giving people their due rights and then treating them with the utmost love. There’s a reason why his numerous descriptions of righteousness abounded with listing traits of honesty, loyalty, compassion, mercy, humility, courtesy, fairness, bravery, generosity, and good humor. There’s a reason why Allah commanded us to show patience as the highest virtue of love and a forgiveness as it’s greatest act. You cannot achieve the highest realities of these traits without first building bonds.

God never told us to leave the people and only find Him. If that were the case, we wouldn’t have all been sent to the same world. He could have kept us all separated on different planets. But He sent us here together and then demanded that we work together, equally, to take care of the life of this world. To care for life, not it’s materials. There’s a reason why Allah loves those who make duaa after prayers and why prayers for another are the quickest answered. There’s a reason why fasting is to stay away from food and sex, but with no limitations on being close to people. There’s a reason why zakat is an obligation so that the poor of the community may be fed and sheltered. When did Allah ever tell us to abandon the people simply for the sake of finding Him? There’s no better way to return to Allah than through prayer and good character. And you cannot have a sound prayer without good character. When the Prophet ﷺ was told of a woman who prayed all night and fasted all day, yet spoke rudely to her neighbor, he said, “There is no goodness in her, she is of the people of the Fire,” [Tabarani].

The only condition is that we attach our hearts to Allah first. Why? Because of our own moral compass. It’s to ensure that if any of our bonds do become corrupted, then we do not sacrifice our goodness for the sake of anyone else’s evil. And then it’s attachment to the Prophet ﷺ because he was the best of characters and we emulate those whom we are nearest to. Allah wished for us to be good through Him, in the footsteps of His beloved ﷺ first, so that we do not lose our way. But then He commands us to be truthful, to be kind, and to be committed to others. To help each other come toward goodness, even if they sin. If we were “meant to” not trust others, to not expect their respect, to not forge loyalty, why we would He even care to demand it from us?

This is something I’ve noticed a lot of people doing, they’ll see someone sin and suddenly cut them off, disgusted, contemptuous and paranoid. Why? I understand the fear of not falling into the same evil, but do we truly have that little hope in Allah? Do we have think that little of His creatures whom He loves more than all of His inanimate objects combined? Why don’t we fear money or physical beauty or power this way? Why do work so hard to acquire that and not help each other survive? Are we truly that arrogant to assume we’re on a path of perfection and those “tainted” must be thrown overboard? Would God even accept people such us who do that anywhere near Him? Our so called “detachment” seems more so detaching ourselves from our own humanity for the sake of the world under the disguise of “religion” than actually coming closer to Allah. What sort of religion is this that one feels compelled to selfishly pretend they’re more worthy of goodness than others?

I see this among many youth today, especially among friends. Are your so called friendships truly that flimsy that all it takes is a stinking whisper from Satan to cut off everyone you know at the advent of Ramadan? I see this between two who love each other and wish to be married, but are delayed; they abandon each other when Ramadan comes around. It doesn’t matter to me what anyone calls these sorts of relationships, “halal” or “haram,” it’s not anyone else’s business what they do, but to suddenly start calling love between two haram simply because we want to go self-righteously waving ayat and ahadith around… You might as well start making every masjid you’ve ever backbit, lied, slandered, stole in, cheated in, or done any sin in, haram for yourself. There’s no such thing as a haram love. Yes, a boy and girl could commit something indecent when they love each other, but that doesn’t invalidate their love and bond, no matter what anyone says. What do we do when we commit a sin? Do we give up praying? Fasting? Giving sadaqah? We make wudu and do better. We rectify ourselves. We help each other. The same goes for love, as all love is true in it’s own goodness, even when we slip up. That doesn’t mean abandon the person you love when you or they or both fall. It means help each other and do better, because nothing pleases Satan than separating a man and woman who love each other in marriage, so do you think he’d even let two people who love each other get married to begin with? Don’t fall for it now. Do better, find the way. There’s a reason why, when we’re all gathered together on the Day of Judgement, Allah will ask those who sinned and turned on each other, “What is the matter with you that you do not help each other?” {37:25}.

“Love is not counted as worldliness.” – Imam al-Ghazali

And this is reiterated all throughout Islamic history. But with all of these quotes we find in certain books, in certain lectures, in certain Twitter & Tumblr accounts… “Don’t let anyone determine your happiness,” “Don’t expect people to return your love,” “Don’t look for Jannah among the people.”

All of this… Where do we get it all from? I understand you’ve been hurt, I assure you, I’ve been through quite a measure of it. I know loss. I know what the soul sounds like when it’s ripped apart from someone it loves and held onto. I know those long screams of agony within. I know that fire and ice that sit in the stomach. And I know the tears we hold back that feel like knives behind the eyes. But it never came from love. It never came from a bond. It came from our lack of faith. It became what it did because the very acts we were guided to do, we did the opposite. Someone failed to catch us on the way down. Someone failed to keep us safe in our own home. Someone failed to keep us warm when the world around us went cold and we could barely move. Someone always fails. We’ll fail others. But that’s still not a reason to give up on people, on ourselves, on each other.

Souls are not glass vases kept too close to the edge of a table that someone runs into, knocks over to break, and forgets to apologize for and clean up the mess. We aren’t things that easily destroy. Souls are eternal, in every religion, in every philosophy, even within sciences that so desperately attempt to explain if a soul even exists. The minds can become knotted, the hearts can crack, but the souls… they can’t be destroyed. It comes from the Breath of God, Himself. “From God we come, to God we return.” There’s a reason Muslims say this. And it’s not because souls are an item you can return at the market when you’ve chipped a corner of your heart or run out of “use” for it. It’s because we come from directly from His Love. “And if your Lord had willed, He could have made mankind one community; but they will not cease to differ. Except whom your Lord has bestowed mercy, and for that did He create them.” {11:118-119}

Souls are not of this world. And nobody is replaceable, as no life is expendable. We were created out of love, for love, to love.

As for those confused about the matter of Qadr (divine will) and Qadar/Nasīb/Maktūb (destiny), let me explain them briefly and their relation to bonds. al-Qadr means Divine Will, which is the will of Allah. This applies to both what He decides and what He allows to happen according to the choices we make. al-Qadar, which many Easterners also call Nasīb or Maktūb, means fate or predestination, which is an article of faith in Islam. We must believe in both in order for our claims and actions in the name of Allah to be true, but there’s a huge misconception about both. What is al-Qadr is Allah’s alone to choose. What is al-Qadar, however, was also influenced by our choices: we play a role in shaping our fate. In Sunni theology, we believe that our fate was written in the Preserved Tablet (al-Lauh al-Mahfudh), but not as something that was completely out of our influence. It’s an acknowledged and understood fact that Allah granted us free will, the ability to choose which intentions and actions we can lean toward. The essential understanding of Muslims scholars is that a person’s choices and actions aren’t caused by what is written, but it is written because Allah already knew what we’d choose. Allah says to us in the Qur’an, “They will cry out to them, “We’re we not with you?” They shall reply, “Yes!” But you caused yourselves to fall into temptation, and you waited with doubt, and vain desires deceived you until the threatened punishment of Allah came, while the arch-deceiver (Iblis) deceived you about Allah,” {57:14}. He also tells us, “And if Allah had known any good in them, He would have made them hear. And if He makes them hear, they would turn back while they withdraw,” {8:23}, as well as, “Indeed, Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves,” {13:11}, and, “Indeed, when We let man taste mercy from us, he rejoices in it. But if evil afflicts him for what his hands have sent forth, then indeed, man is ungrateful,” {42:48}.

Qadr is what Allah decrees and this is not set in stone, as the Prophet ﷺ mentioned that duaa can change a Divine Decree. For example, if you’re about to be afflicted by a calamity, you could have made a sincere duaa with trust in Allah that averts it. That’s daily Qadr. There’s also yearly Qadr that Allah allots a certain amount of events in a person’s year like their sustenance. And that’s a Decree that takes place on nights like Laylatul Qadr. There’s also life time Qadr & Imām al-Ghazali elaborates on it, basically that there are four things Allah decrees, which is also a part of our fate (Qadar): our birth, nature (whether we are born as jinns, humans, animals, etc), sustenance (one’s food and shelter) and death. And these are the only four that are completely out of our influences. For example, you could make a million dollars and not a single penny would go into your stomach because it wasn’t chosen for you by Allah and you could be afflicted with a disease that prevents you from eating well. Similarly, you could literally sit in the desert and Allah would send you food in some way or another. And then there’s Qadar/Naseeb/Fate that’s written for you based on what Allah knew you’d choose and act toward it. This is everything else. But here is where both Qadr and Qadar collide, and it can get very complicated. It’s all about choices.

The way certain scholars have described this phenomenon is: Allah provides you with a variety of options and guides you to make a choice. That’s why He also sent revelations and prophets: to inform us about our ability in free will to make better choices. Imam Abu Hanifa, whose foundation most other scholars have based their stance on, elaborated on this the best. Ultimately,  Allah provides a person with a variety of options to choose from and when they do, He decides the conditions they can act upon it. That’s why good intentions made yet not acted are rewarded, and bad intentions made yet not acted are also rewarded. So: Allah provides the options, we make the choice with intention, and He decides whether or not we can act on it. If we do, We’ve acquired the responsibility for that action, because we chose it anyway. That’s why we’re rewarded or punished for actions. They become our responsibility.

Now take this in relation to the bonds we forge. Allah will guide people to us, but it’s up to us to choose how we’ll deal with them and what sort of relationships we’d build. If we grow it and work toward the good together, it becomes one of the noblest of deeds and two true friends who love one another through His glory become among the seven groups that are granted His shade of mercy on the Day of Judgement. If we hurt one other, break apart and abandon each other, we become afflicted with pain and hardship, both in this world and the Hereafter. And we can’t say, “It’s meant to be,” “It was for a reason,” and such, because we don’t know what is hidden from us on the Tablet. And more often than not, it’s because of our own choices that cause such calamities, as losing people in your life who sincerely love and care for you is indeed a calamity, just like losing any other blessing He sends to us. It’s our responsibility to maintain our relationships with the utmost care.

Remember this: we can’t reach for a thicket of thorns and cry about no roses, when the rose bush is all the way across the other side of the garden. Learn to attach yourself to better people. And there’s a way to do this.

The first rule to anything, though: pay attention. We’d avoid nearly every man-made problem in the world if we’d only actually directed our focus to what matters in a critical and rational way with a stable connection to what we can feel. We’d understand ourselves a lot better, too.

Now take that rule and understand something about love. I’ll use the ever-present example of two lovers, as the first love between souls was between Adam & Haw’wa: if you’re looking for romance before love, you’re going to confuse playful interest with serious dedication. There’s obvious differences in the levels of attention we extend. Learn to differentiate between eye-service that boosts your ego versus genuine effort toward growth that’s directed toward elevating yourself. For both men and women, that means stop chasing “goals” of wealth, good looks, and social status. There’s a reason why the Prophet ﷺ said a woman is married for her looks, money, status or religion, *so* choose the one for her religion, as religion’s main purpose is to lead on toward excellent character. It doesn’t mean find a woman with all four, those are exceptionally rare and the first three are all but useless down the road once you start aging quickly at 40. It means don’t focus on the shallow, but on what’s lasting: good character. And it’s a secret (when it shouldn’t be) to those who’ve loved truly, a person becomes beautiful in being who they are when you truly love them, wealth is in every moment you can warm one another with a hug, and the only status that ever matters thereafter is that your beloved sees you.

There is nothing wrong with attachment. Just do it for the right reasons and you’ll start seeing what a real bond is like: gardening. It’s a simple concept. People are people, love is a force of nature between them to give them life, and our acts are what give it a purpose to work toward. People are not vases, love is not a tool, and luxurious sex in a million dollar home with all the comfort in the world is not the ultimate blissful fruit. That’s not how love works, that’s not how people work. Love doesn’t just fall from the sky nor do we fall into it. It’s not discovered by the eye “at first sight,” & it’s not grown simply by growing accustomed to tolerating each others presence. We’re not going to compare people to things with some long faux scientific metaphor about gravity or animal sexual nature. What we are going to do is picture the growth of love like two people gardening and simply draw a picture of two souls working within the realm of the soul.

If you wish for love to grow in your heart, check how fertile your heart is to even nourish such a seed. Who waters it with good intentions and tends to taking out the weeds of a bad mindset? Do we let the light of faith in goodness shine upon it? Or do we close off our hearts from forming any bond and let our hearts rot in the darkness? What about the partner we choose? Is the soil of their heart filled called respect or contempt? Is the water they pour into it clear like honesty or murky like deceit? Is the sunlight of their work like loyalty with consistency in self-sacrifice or do they keep themselves in the dark with apathy and laziness? Can the two of you work well enough together with the trust of all your heart to grow that tree together? Will you make a forest or leave a rotting stump behind because you cut down the tree out of impatience for not giving you the fruits you so desire, when you desire it? Can you do it together for others and return to God all together?

Are you two souls that act as caretakers of a garden or simply thieves who decided to steal the fruits of others? That’s abandonment. That’s what destroyed us, not attachment.