Love Beyond Utility and Instrumentality

Rabia rejected instrumental relationship to the Divine, loving God not for paradise or reward but purely. Transposed to community organizing, this challenges the tendency to assess people's worth by their utility to campaigns or their 'leadership potential' as traditionally defined. Love beyond utility means honoring every community member's intrinsic dignity and contributions, not only those positioned to become official leaders or public spokespeople. This concept disrupts hierarchies within organizing spaces where charisma, education, or eloquence become the measure of value. When organizers practice this love, they create welcoming spaces for shy members, elders, caregivers, and others whose essential contributions might otherwise be invisible. This deepens collective wisdom by including voices typically marginalized in organizing, and it builds genuine belonging where people feel loved for who they are, not what they can produce for the movement.