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obviously also a state of being ‘loved more’ by God—it is necessary
to follow the Prophet’s example. Indeed, God says this,
precisely:
Say: ‘If you love God, follow me, and God will love you
more (yuhbibkum), and forgive you your sins; God is
Forgiving, Merciful.’ (Aal ‘Imran, 3:31)
In the Qur’an God twice mentions the words ‘good example [to
be followed]’ (‘uswatun hasanatun’), once referring to the Prophet
Abraham and his companions,40 and once the Prophet Muhammad
, as follows:
Verily there is for you a good example in the Messenger of
God for whoever hopes for [the encounter with] God and
the Last Day, and remembers God often. (Al-Ahzab, 33:21)
Hence this means that following the example of the Prophet
Muhammad , means above all loving God (thus hoping for Him)
and remembering God often. Indeed, a large part of the sunnah
(the custom of the Prophet )—if not most of it—consists of
either invocations or supplications (and all supplications necessarily
remember God and are therefore in a sense also ‘invocations’) to
be pronounced before or after almost every imaginable legitimate
and necessary action or vital function from the moment of birth
to the moment of death; marking the beginning of each day of the
week, from waking up in the morning to going to bed at night; from
hearing a rooster crow in the morning to seeing the moon at night;
from putting on one’s clothes to taking them off; from eating and
drinking to going to the bathroom; from making love to (and against)
being angry; from coughing to sneezing to laughing to yawning;
from leaving one’s home to entering it; from greeting someone to
saying goodbye to them; from before starting one’s prayers to after
finishing them, and from before starting a conversation to after
had gone ‘beyond’ that to a state where God had actually also spoken through his tongue.
40 See: Al-Mumtahinah, 60:4 and 6.
39