Know that the Messenger of Allah is among you. If he were to obey you in many things, you would suffer for it. However, Allah has given you the love of faith and has made it pleasing to your hearts, and has made disbelief, deviance, and disobedience hateful to you. People such as these are rightly guided. ( Surat al-Hujurat, 49:7)
Loving faith, deriving pleasure from material and spiritual tastes, as well as hating disbelief and seeing it as evil, seem to be natural inclinations. However, they actually are blessings attained by Allah's favor. Allah relates this metaphysical truth in the verse quoted above.
In order to show the value of this great blessing and gift to believers, Allah creates the opposite situation for unbelievers. Failing to see the beauties engendered by faith, unbelievers derive pleasure from the gloomy and troublesome system of those who are far from religion. All of the evil and indecency found in the systems of unbelief have been made to seem good to them. This secret is divulged in the Qur'an, as follows:
Is someone on a clear path from his Lord like those whose bad actions have been made to seem good to them and who follow their own desires? (Surah Muhammad, 47:14)
Believers, who know Allah, notice His compassion for them, recognize that they exist only by His will, and that everything they like and take pleasure in come from Him. They attain the superiority of Allah's love and faith. Believers do not need to please anyone other than Allah, and so they ask for no other being's help. Indeed, people find peace only in the remembrance of Allah. They consider doing good deeds in order to earn Allah's good pleasure, living by His religion's code of moral excellence, observing His commands and prohibitions, being concerned about their fellow Muslims, and striving for the Hereafter as sources of joy and happiness.
