The author of this book said: Love, in our opinion, is of six kinds. The first is God's love towards men. The others are the love of men for God, the love of those who love one another in God, the love of the elite among believers, the love of the commonality of Muslims, and the love of all other animate beings.

Regarding God's love towards men there are differences of opinion. Some say that God's love for a man consists in his granting him success in all his affairs. Others hold that God's love for a man is his guiding him to him, so that to say that God loves every believer and every Muslim means only that he has guided every believer and every Muslim to belief and to Islam.[181] Still others maintain that his love for men is like men's love for him and like your love for yourself,for you are his property, and a wise being loves his property. Moreover, your love for him is like his love for you, because your love for him proceeds from his love. It is also said that his love for you is like his love for himself, because man is his act, but his acts are his attributes, and he loves his attributes. Indeed God loves all his creation in its various degrees.

The preferred opinion on this question is that God's love for men has no image in the souls of men, since it is one of his attributes, subsisting in him eternally, and his attributes have no image in our intellects, just as his essence has no image in our intellects. For our intellects are originated in time, and the originated cannot form any image of the Originator or of the mode of his acts. Rather God's love for his loved ones (awliyāʾ) is known by its signs, which are certain characteristics we shall discuss later in the appropriate chapter.

As for man's love for God, [182] it is God's act in the heart of man. But there are differences of opinion regarding it. Some say that it is an attribute of man, since he is a lover and hence possesses the attribute of love. Others, a branch of the Sufis, say that it is an attribute of the beloved.