" He called them women (an-nisâ') which is a plural which does not have a singular form. For
that reason, he said, "He made me love three things in your world: women..." and he did not
say, "woman". He took note of the fact that they came after him in existence. The word an-
nisa' also means postponement. Allah says, "The month postponed is an increase in
disbelief," (9:37) and the sale of "nasi'a" is said to be by postponement, that is, by credit. That
is why he said an-nisa'. He loved them only by rank, and they are the place of the passive.
They are to him as nature is to Allah in which Allah opened the forms of the world by the
projection of the will and the divine command which is marriage in the world of elemental
forms, and aspiration (himma) in the world of luminous spirits, as in the order of premises
and their meanings through deduction. All of that is the marriage of the first uniqueness in
each of these aspects. Whoever loves women in this measure, loves with a divine love.
Whoever loves them in respect to natural appetite in particular, deprives himself of the
knowledge of this appetite. For him it is a form without a spirit (rûh). That form in the heart
of the matter is the essence of a spirit, but it is not witnessed by the one who comes to his
wife or any woman by pure gratification, and he does not perceive the one it is for even so, he
has no knowledge of himself, as others have no knowledge of him, since he has not been
verbally named so that he could be known. "

― Ibn Arabi , The Bezels of Wisdom