The Aesthetics of Islam, By Shaykh Dr Farid Al- Ansari

When we talk about the aesthetics of the religion of Islam, we mean that Allah has made Islam a beautiful religion and willed the practice of religion to be beautiful as well. Aesthetics here is indeed linked to the beautiful divine will which aims for man to adorn himself with religion by making this adornment an adoration of Allah, the Lord of the worlds, and a way of establishing civilization on Earth, in accordance with the following prophetic hadith: " Allah is beautiful and he loves beauty " [ Muslim ] .

Aesthetics in Islam has been primarily concerned with producing 'the beauty of the soul' and nurturing it by pruning it and raising it to the highest possible level of human experience. She did not expend her energy on making “the beauty of the image” shine with earthly paintings as is the case with Western aesthetics. Rather, it has made the image an appendix to the soul and not the other way around; when the soul is beautiful, the image is beautiful, and when the soul is ugly, the image is ugly. Hence the following maxim of the Messenger of our Creator ( sws ) : "Allah does not look at your body or your faces, but He looks at your hearts and your deeds" [ Muslim ] .

The production of the "beautiful man" guarantees the production of a beautiful life and a beautiful civilization and vice versa-without the slightest doubt- . From there, all the fundamental principles of religion and all its ramifications - as has been exposed in this book - take care to initiate man to revive in himself the beautiful tastes in matters of dogma, worship and of behavior.