There is a physical beauty—that which is measured according to the eye of the beholder. There is an inner beauty, that which is manifested through wisdom. And there is the beauty that is incomprehensible, that which the heart can perceive but fail to explain—that which behooves silence and eternal awe. Every creation is endowed with all sorts of beauty.
A physical beauty, as was the magnificent Prophet Yusuf (alihimu Salam), is that which eyes can behold and hearts admire. Yet, it is tied with time; it withers with age and circumstance. Today you’re beautiful, but tomorrow you’re not. We’ve seen countless examples where by an instant accident leaves one with utter physical damage. Then the physical beauty ceases to exist. There is also cultural beauty. Some cultures around the world consider body mutilation a type of beauty; others shun it, and rarely consider it rather, uncivilized. And in some cultures, as in the West, it is highly commercialized and implicitly defined for women. There are also the beauty contests, where one would be considered more ‘beautiful’ than the other. Because of this and other reasons, physical beauty is somehow broad and even controversial. But it is certainly dependent on the eye of the beholder.
What can I say about inner beauty? It is the beginning of everything about a person. Inner beauty is that entity of one which is a product of both nurture and nature. It changes and varies tremendously with time, but unlike physical beauty, it gets refined and beautified over time. It would, in other words, be as simple as experience or as complex as personality. Inner beauty is also the faculty through which people interact with the rest of the world. Some people are considered more beautiful than others by virtue of their kindness, other by virtue of their immense knowledge and etc. Most amazingly, through getting to know an individual, one either gets attracted to or alienated from him/her. It is then, that one’s beauty is more visible (pronounced) the more we get to know them; meaning, that every individual IS beautiful by virtue of who they are. Hence, unless we get to know a person, his/her inner beauty lies dormant and unreachable. And that is why it is imperative that we strive to reach out to others in kindness and mercy as our Beloved, may Allah raise His rank, has practiced in his Sunnah. He has said that the most beloved to Him in the Day of Judgment are those who are best in their character. Inner beauty, then, is the manifestation of intellectual beauty.
The Beauty of the Most High is unattainable, and at times, incomprehensible. As feeble human beings, our intellects are limited and as are our faculties that drive us. Hence, to see, understand, and respond to the Magnificence of the Lord of the Worlds, requires that we’re not bound to this little planet we live in. And only because of this, we’re unable to fathom the Beauty of the Eternal and the Majesty of the One God. This very recognition of the vastness of the Divine Kingdom, our limitation and NEED of assistance from the Omnipotent, is sufficient enough to silence one in awe and SURRENDER—a beauty of eternity.
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