Islamic culture sees that the universe is subject to an accurate system that indicates its purposiveness, if the universe were in chaos there wouldn’t be purposiveness, functionality and disorder would prevail. Creatures should have something that regulates their movement because no creature can achieve its goals if it moves randomly. Since man is a part of the universal system, he must subject to
the same law which moves the rest of the elements in the universe. Absurd (purposeless) movement is destructive, so all religions with their different sources, as well as most of the human philosophies, focused on regulating man’s movement and determining its goal, however man rarely responded to that. Since man is responsible for his actions in front of Allah and people, this responsibility was associated with freedom and the ability to choose, that can be available for man under one condition, it is “knowledge”, in other words man’s responsibility and freedom to choose are proportional to his knowledge. Man was created as a cognitive creature in the sense that he can acquire knowledge and get it from its resources. He’s also equipped with another power more important than knowledge, and it makes man seek that knowledge, this power is love, which requires something to be loved, “i.e. beauty”. Beauty refers to an absolute concept that is hard to define, it extends to cover everything in the universe, and therefore, defining the concept of beauty is hard and controversial. Search has led us to the discovery of a definition consistent with the general theory of beauty in the Arab and Islamic culture. Beauty is a character present in the beautiful object, and it arises from the perfection that is reached by the consistency between the elements that form the beautiful object in form and content. That is to say beauty enables the object to perform its function, which is the cause of its existence, to the fullest. The concept of beauty for Arabs and Muslims is related to the cultural output, which is the product of the Arab-Islamic thought, and it can’t be understood without the Islamic faith that governs the rest of cultural output for Arabs and Muslims. However, we know that this thought (Arab-Islamic thought) wasn’t theoretical thought, it exists in reality since the rise of Islam up till now, this thought has been mixed with cultures received from other civilizations, represented by people of those civilizations who live in the countries that were conquered by Arabs – Muslims, whether those people kept their religions or converted to Islam and carried with them the remains of their cultures. This fact got the concept of beauty out of the pure religious Islamic framing and related it with the product of the melting pot of the Islamic faith, in which all other cultures were mixed to give a new integrated civilization governed by this faith, directed and expressed by the Arabic language with all knowledge and civilization meanings special to the Arab culture. Through the above mentioned ideas, we can develop a reference to depend on while talking about the concept of beauty in the Arab-Islamic thought:
A- Man is the one who determines the concept of beauty in objects according to the object’s functions which are the cause of its existence, in comparison to the existence of man, which is related to the existence of Allah according to the Arab-Islamic thought. So those objects help man to realize his own beauty and discover the essence to become more able to perceive the world and become aware of it. B- Beauty in objects is measured by its ratio to perfection, which is necessary for its existence and function (the cause of its existence). So the distance between the objects and perfection is proportional to that between the objects and beauty. There is no place for absurdity and play, but pursuing the cause of existence to reach perfection, which is the source of happiness. This is seen in the Holy Quran when Allah says: (And we did not create the heavens and earth and that between them in play (38)) Sura Ad-Dukhan. They were created for man, the master of all beings, and put at his service to achieve his succession on earth, which is referred to in (And [mention, O Muhammad] when your Lord said to the angles, “indeed, I will make upon earth a successive authority” (30)) Sura Al-Baqara
C- Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) says: (Allah is beautiful and loves beauty). Since Allah, the source of existence is beautiful and loves beauty, then everything He has created is necessarily beautiful, because it’s unreasonable that something ugly can be created by a beautiful creator who loves beauty. D- If the concept of beauty is based on perfection, then what is perfect? Man also defines perfection through his position in the universe. Al-Jurjani presented through his definitions an inclusive concept of perfection according to the Arab-Islamic thought, when he said: Perfection is what makes the thing complete or perfect in its content or form. So perfection in objects is on two levels, content is the first, and form is the second, those two levels of perfection unite in man, the most beautiful creature in the origination, and man is perfect in both content and form. Content and form have each its own suitable perfection. Beauty in human beings is the most beautiful thing in the universe because it derives its existence from Allah, just like all the other creatures, but he is superior to everything in his service for having the whiff of a divine, which doesn’t exist in things but in man only, as Allah says (And [mention, O Muhammad] when your Lord said to the angles, “I will create a human being out of clay from an altered black mud, and when I have proportioned him and breathed into him of My [created] soul, then fall down to him in prostration (29, 30)) Sura Al-Hijr. In this way, we can sum up the matter by saying that the beauty in objects is related to the perfection that arises from proportionality and consistency between content and form in the beautiful object. The more the proportion of perfection is and the greater the harmony in the performance of this object, the better it’s attributed to beauty to describe it. Writing by: Ekhlas Kassar
Translated by: Yasmeen Jaby Al-Haramein
Sources: Quran – Hadith. References: An Introduction to the Aesthetic Thought for Arabs and Muslims by Dr. Hussein Sadeek
- See more at: http://muslim-academy.com/islam-and-beauty-1/ .6zw2gTwh.dpuf
