The Shortest Way to God is (through) Love Ramazan Muslu The divine love is like a huge ocean; there is no definition of love or of its borders. (Seyyid Nizamoglu) Introduction According to Islam, Adam, said to be created as a best mould, 1 is a vicegerent (khal�fa) of God. 2 This means that He is the Owner, the supreme creator of the uni- verse and man is created from the similar qualities as His Master. He says in the Quran I have breathed into him of My Spirit. 3 This implies that man has two sides: one belongs to the world, and the other belongs to the divine. God is said to have created man in His form 4 and this shows that a human being is different from His other creations. Man is a combination of body and spirit and has been entrusted with both wisdom and the ability to recognise wisdom. 5 Man is different from animals according to the philosophers; man is explained as hayv�n-� n�tiq i.e. man with wisdom. According to the Islamic mystics man is a lover (hayv�n-� �shiq). In this paper I will try to present the way to love and its peculiarities as the Sufis interpret it with reference to Hujw�r� (d. 1077), Najmaddin al-Kubr� (d. 1221) and specially Mawl�n� Jal�l al-d�n al-R�m� (d. 1273). My purpose is to understand the subject according to the views of the historians, the intellectuals and the academics. Love is something as vast as an ocean und thus I feel that it is impossible to speak about real love properly, much less define it. Further more, it is well known that the explanation of love is not love alone, because love is a feeling (h�l), and feelings are never mere words (q�l). In Sufi tradition, this constraint is stated briefly in these words: the one who doesnt taste, doesnt know. So how are we now going to find out how we might reach the heights of loving God and what are the ways by which we can reach Him? 1 Qur�n 95:4. 2 Qur�n 2:30. 3 Qur�n 15:29; 38:72. 4 Bukh�r�, Ist�z�n, 1; Muslim, Birr, 115. 5 The verse says that: Surely We offered the trust to the heavens and the earth and the moun- tains, but they refused to bear it because they were afraid of it. Yet man took it up; surely he is unjust, ignorant. ( Qur�n 33:72).