BismiLlah,
On Beauty
And Order and Chaos
I’m listening to a poem as I type this. The time is 12:30 pm, and it is the sixteenth of January, 2024. It is the second time I am writing this paragraph. I wanted to write about beauty. I wrote about beauty on Twitter a few days ago (see the list below). I wanted to write about experiencing beauty. And, here I am, lost for words.
How does a person communicate beauty? Recently, I’ve been silent a lot, which can be a good thing. However, it is not a good thing. Not necessarily bad, but not good either. So, how can I communicate beauty when I can’t speak? If I don’t speak? How does a silent person communicate beauty? I think the concepts of grammar, punctuation, and syntax kill beauty. They limit how much beauty we can communicate. Is beauty created or observed? Are truths created or observed?
How much beauty does a thing contain? How might we quantify beauty? When we say that one thing is more beautiful than another, what do we mean? How are we able to make such judgments? What is the physics that underlies the human experience and quantification of beauty? Some people might insist that beauty is not quantifiable, that it is just felt. We know, without any rational analysis, that one thing is beautiful and another isn’t. We know, intuitively, that one thing is more beautiful than another. True, but why do we find mathematics beautiful?
One view of beauty is that beautiful things appeal to some fundamental thing in our hearts/souls that God placed there so that we can know Him and love Him. This view might continue to argue that all the beauty we experience in the world is simply a small amount of beauty from God. That the beauty of this world is a very small taste of the beauty of Jannah. What about The One who is Jameel Himself? How beautiful is He? How much sweetness would a person find in looking at Allah? The verses in Suratul-Qiyamah come to mind.
I thought of the idea of chaos. Beautiful chaos. Organized chaos. I got interested in fractal geometry when I was in secondary school. It is an aspect of mathematics that finds the underlying beautiful patterns in things that we otherwise see to be chaotic, unorganized, and crude. Interestingly, such things permeate the world around us and the world within us (our brains, nervous system, blood transportation, xyz). It is said that a person needs to know what a straight line looks like before they can call another line crooked.
Picture by Adrien Converse (Unsplash).
Is it that we don’t find certain things to be beautiful, orderly, and enthralling simply because our beauty-finding equipment is faulty? What makes them faulty? Epistemic arrogance? The ugliness in our souls? The flip case could be asked as well. Why do we not find some ugly things to be ugly? Are there darknesses that affect the ability of our beauty-finding devices to function well? Sins are darknesses, ugly. Adhulm, dhulumaat.
Intuitionists concerning beauty (those who say we know beauty intentionally) have only half the picture. Someone said and I quote: “intuitions are the result of processing large amounts of data in short periods.” The question then goes: what does it mean to process data? How do we process data? I am talking in cycles. How do we recognize beauty? I think that people who can recognize large amounts of intricately woven beauty could be those people whose minds are already beautiful, such that their recognition of beauty is simply a superimposition of their minds on what is observed.
As for those who need more assistance in seeing why mathematics is beautiful or why Ibn Taymiyyah is a genius, then it is possible that their minds aren’t as flexible as they could otherwise be. In human language, there is inherent beauty and acquired beauty, and that which is acquired for some is inherent for others. This means that we can acquire more beauty throughout our lives. Allah mentioned in the Quran that He created everything with truth and with a purpose. One of my friends mentioned that the fact that we are different means that there is something about me that’s true that's not in you and something true about you that’s not in me.
Concerning beauty, I guess it’s okay to be greedy. How can we experience maximal beauty and experience the beauty in all that exists? Simply, a perpetual intimacy with Al-Haqq. By coming to know Allah through His created signs and revealed signs, we can have some taste of this maximally attainable experience of beauty. Then, when we look at all creation, situation, and timeline through the lens of Allah’s beautiful names, attributes, and actions, we can be in a perpetual state of experiencing beauty, a comforting intimacy with Allah.
Hadith:
عَنْ أَبِي هُرَيْرَة رَضِيَ اللهُ عَنْهُ قَالَ: قَالَ رَسُول اللَّهِ صلى الله عليه و سلم إنَّ اللَّهَ تَعَالَى قَالَ: "مَنْ عَادَى لِي وَلِيًّا فَقْد آذَنْتهُ بِالْحَرْبِ، وَمَا تَقَرَّبَ إلَيَّ عَبْدِي بِشَيْءٍ أَحَبَّ إلَيَّ مِمَّا افْتَرَضْتُهُ عَلَيْهِ، وَلَا يَزَالُ عَبْدِي يَتَقَرَّبُ إلَيَّ بِالنَّوَافِلِ حَتَّى أُحِبَّهُ، فَإِذَا أَحْبَبْتُهُ كُنْت سَمْعَهُ الَّذِي يَسْمَعُ بِهِ، وَبَصَرَهُ الَّذِي يُبْصِرُ بِهِ، وَيَدَهُ الَّتِي يَبْطِشُ بِهَا، وَرِجْلَهُ الَّتِي يَمْشِي بِهَا، وَلَئِنْ سَأَلَنِي لَأُعْطِيَنَّهُ، وَلَئِنْ اسْتَعَاذَنِي لَأُعِيذَنَّهُ". [رَوَاهُ الْبُخَارِيُّ].
On the authority of Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) who said: The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said, “Verily Allah ta’ala has said: ‘Whosoever shows enmity to a wali (friend) of Mine, then I have declared war against him. And My servant does not draw near to Me with anything more loved to Me than the religious duties I have obligated upon him. And My servant continues to draw near to me with nafil (supererogatory) deeds until I Love him. When I Love him, I am his hearing with which he hears, and his sight with which he sees, and his hand with which he strikes, and his foot with which he walks. Were he to ask [something] of Me, I would surely give it to him; and were he to seek refuge with Me, I would surely grant him refuge.’ ”
[Al-Bukhari]
Hadith 38, 40 Hadith an-Nawawi
Beauty: What Silences the Mind:
Quran, when it reaches the depths/darkness of our souls
Mathematics, when it adds up
Faces of loved ones that evoke smiles
Understanding another person without biases and loving them more with biases
Stars, on moonless nights
The moon, especially when SuperBlue
Voices that are like water – stimulating and calming
Water, itself – seas, streams, rivers, and oceans
Beautiful fractal geometry, when one loses oneself in it
Watching children learn
Observing parents caring
Seeing the light bulb moment on the face of one’s student
Harmony of worshippers around the Kaaba
Promises of Jannah that relieve the heart
Islam, in its completeness and consistency
Food, well-cooked delicious food
Father-daughter relationships
Saturday afternoon breezes after labor (boarding school)
Books, even those one hasn’t read
People long gone, whose lives and works changed our world – being lost in their worlds
Character, awe-inspiring, and elegant – al-Ghazali and Ibn-Taymiyyah wrote about this
Mercy, when justice isn’t a necessity
People, beautiful people, whose presence makes us feel all our heartbeats – their hearts, minds, xyz.
Whatever I have said that is correct is from Allah, and all the errors are mine. May Allah make me beautiful – body, mind, heart, and soul. Aameen.
– Umar Hfe
January 16th, 2024.