Beauty and the Sunna

Jum'ah khutba - Sheikh Abdal Hakim Murad - Cambridge - 30th November 2012 - 14 mins 56secs 'Shall the reward of doing what is beautiful be other than doing what is beautiful?'  -Surah Ar-Rahman verse 60 In this khutba covering the topic of beauty, the Sheikh begins by noting that the connection linking us to Transcendent is the receptive affirmation of what is beautiful and indicates the Supernatural. To the extent that the sense of beauty, truth and order rules in our hearts, that is how in touch we are with reality. This apprehension is available to any person, no matter how young or unlettered they are.  Indeed the Sheikh notes that the life of the Prophet was a life lived intensely, passionately and lyrically in response to what is beautiful. As human beings we have two ways to respond to beauty; to turn inwards towards individualism, or outwards from our selves, to engage with the Ultimate. We are between tendency upwards, and the tendency down. Ugliness is alwa...