Love answered with love
تُحِبُّونَ ٱللَّهَ فَٱتَّبِعُونِى يُحْبِبْكُمُ ٱللَّهُ
tuḥibbūna llāha fa-ttabiʿūnī yuḥbibkumu llāhu — you are loving Allah, then follow me; Allah will love you
In a single verse the verb ḥ-b-b runs both ways: the addressees' claim to love Allah is met with a promise that, on a stated condition, Allah will love them in return.
Verse 3:31 is built as a mirror. The speaker is told to say: "If you are loving Allah, then follow me; Allah will love you" (3:31). The same root ḥ-b-b appears at each end of the conditional structure. The first occurrence, tuḥibbūna, is a second-person plural present verb with a stative sense, describing the addressees' present stance toward Allah. The second, yuḥibbikumu, is a jussive with Allah as its subject and the addressees as its object, naming the reciprocal action that will follow. Between the two stands the condition: fa-ttabiʿūnī, "follow me" (3:31). The mirror is thus not automatic. The verse does not say that Allah's love is unconditional; it makes the addressees' love for Allah effective only through the act of following the messenger, and it is that act, not the professed love itself, that triggers the second half of the mirror. The verse then adds a further consequence in parallel: wa-yaghfir lakum dhunūbakum, "and will cover for you your tail-ends" (3:31), and closes with "Allah is Ever-Covering, Ever-Merciful", where "Ever-Covering" echoes the covering just promised. The structure presents love as a two-way relation that the Qur'an frames in verbs of action: loving on one side, following as the bridge, loving and covering on the other.
Where it occurs
- 3:31 Both halves of the mirror occur in this one verse: the addressees' love for Allah opens the conditional, and Allah's love for them is the promised result of following the speaker.
All Qur'anic expressions