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It is my understanding that the Muslim's view of God is that He is love. That He loves believers.

So I wonder, who do Muslims say that God loved before he created the everything else? How could he love when there is nothing there to love. This is in contrast with the Christian's view of God, which is that the Father loved the Son through the Holy Spirit from eternity past, before creating man in his image. Is there an Islamic equivalent to this?

Thank you!

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  • It was Prophet Muhammad (saww).
    – Bleeding Fingers
    Jun 19, 2014 at 18:04
  • @BleedingFingers Care to elaborate? :) Do you mean Allah loved the prophet (saww) for all eternity past or something else?
    – LCIII
    Jun 19, 2014 at 18:11
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    Drop in Islam Chat comments can't be used for extend discussions. If I had extensive knowledge on the subject I would have provided an answer.
    – Bleeding Fingers
    Jun 19, 2014 at 18:13
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    Have you so far heard of the Sufi concept of Divine Love and its role in creation? In short, they believe that Allah loved Himself, and out of His self-love the first principle was created and that is the Light of the Holy Prophet.
    – infatuated
    Jun 20, 2014 at 19:29
  • That is some confidential wisdom, which I think no one has the knowledge of except the God Almighty. All you can get are nicely cooked theories....... And yeah, this depends on whom you ask....
    – servant-of-Wiser
    Jun 1, 2015 at 19:25

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the answer is that the attribute of God is that God loves. His name is "Al wudood" which means the one who loves so God is the possessor of this attribute if the creation is not there, that does not mean this attribute is not there.

The answer is simple God is not dependent on the Creation to have the attribute of love

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    So are you saying one can have the attribute of love without actually loving any created thing? Can Allah decide to stop loving the already created creation and still have this attribute? Also, can a person have an attribute of love without loving any created thing as Allah does?
    – LCIII
    Jun 20, 2014 at 16:03
  • Brother you are taking wrong way. If a good person doesn't show there goodness then will you tell him as he is not a good person since he has not shown any good traits. and you can't say what Allah can decide our minds can't think upto that level. And Allah has already told us that he loved us more than that of 70 mothers so he will never break his promise. Other wise I might be died how many sin i did i don't know.
    – smali
    Jun 20, 2014 at 16:24
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    "God is the possessor of this attribute if the creation is not there, that does not mean this attribute is not there" By that reasoning, you can have the attribute "merciful" without ever acting mercifully and instead torturing all the time. It makes the words meaningless.
    – G. Bach
    May 10, 2018 at 12:19
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According to Islam, God cannot be restricted by time or space...so by asking who God loved "before" he created the world doesn't seem to make any Islamic sense. It's like saying God can be restricted by time similar to humans and that He did not know the believers before He created them.

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The problem here is that we "the humans" see the God with a humanized eyes, it means we consider the God as a Human like as and we start to ask questions, the brother @ali786 have respond greatly to the questions, but there's a thing to consider here, you must know that to be considered as a God you must be out of what you've created.

+1 if it helped, thank you.

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Man has limited knowledge as always

Who knows creations of the worlds with life before and after this time.... look at the space we are in one night and ours will end one "'DAY'". but before anything even before the pen Allah created nur of Holy Prophet Muhammad (salalaho alahe wasalam).

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I briefly looked into this same question after thoroughly losing a briefly debate with a philosophically-minded Christian.

Imam al-Ghazali writes about this in Chapter 8 of Incoherence of Philosophy. He says that the mistake in reasoning is saying that God's Love is strictly in relationship to someone else. Instead, he argues, God's love exists independent of others, as a quality of him. It is not dependent on creation. With respect to creation it may manifest as what we call love in our temporal sense, but in a pre-eternal sense it has an essential existence, independent of creation.

Phrased different, God's love does not require a target to exist, it is a quality of him. Asking "who did he love then" is begging the question.

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