Islam is often negatively portrayed by some who argue that Islam is a violent faith that is against peace and love. Sometimes you will hear the critics ask where is the love in Islam? Where is the peace in Islam?

For any who do study Islam, they will find the love and peace within the religion. For example, the condition on entering paradise, now according to the critics, the condition for entering paradise according to Islam is to kill innocent non-Muslims, and this off course is nonsense.

According to the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), the condition for entering paradise is the following:

Abu Huraira reported: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “You will not enter Paradise until you believe and you will not believe until you love each other. Shall I show you something that, if you did, you would love each other? Spread peace between yourselves.” (Sahih Muslim 54)

So according to the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) the way into heaven is by loving each other, and how do we love each other? By spreading peace.

In essence, the Islamic way to paradise is through love and peace. We attain paradise by loving each other, and this obviously means not hating each other.

If one is loving towards another, this means they treat them with respect, with kindness, they are not oppressive towards them, they are not harmful towards them and so forth.

All of the above actions would be considered as spreading the peace as the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) said, and obviously if all of these acts were being spread and acted upon by the people and society in general, then this would be a very nice and peaceful-loving place to live, and it is these that are the Islamic conditions for entering paradise.

What is very important to note about this hadith as well is not simply the conditions for entering paradise, which is showing love spreading peace to others, but the prophet even links the act of belief, to the act of love when he says “you shall not believe until you love each other”.

So this shows how important the act of love is, it is linked with the act of belief, so to believe and have a proper faith in Islam, one must love the other person. So a great attachment is made to the act of love, being linked to the act of belief, to put it simply, you cannot believe in Islam, or you cannot have a proper form of belief in Islam, if you do not love.