The Saintly Beauty of Islam

THE beauty of Islam is the beauty of the Muslims, the most beautiful being the beloved Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, his wives and Companions, the Followers, and then the Friends of Allah who have come afterwards, putting their tiny feet (though bigger than the world) into his footprints whose stature reaches past the farthest stars.

Is this hyperbole? Out of passionate enthusiasm have I gone too far?  But there is a mystery here.  Every revelation is brought by a person.  This has been true since the beginning of humankind’s legacies from generation to generation, and for every “culture,” however seemingly primitive.  Even the peaceful, cave-dwelling Tasady of the Philippines, with no word for “war” in their language, must have had a “prophet” or saintly one to bring them the news, or a somehow human consciousness flowering among them. 

And our encounter with a spiritual path new to our lives is most often through a person, even if our reading has led us to seek out a human representative or personification of some “literary” wisdom, and then that we see that that person either validates or invalidates what we found through the clues of inspiring words.  Such is the way of Islam as well, for no amount of reading can substitute adequately for a person who embodies the teaching in its simple incandescence.  And if we are lucky, and led by Allah to Allah, that person embodies the highest spiritual attainment as well—in a word, a living saint (in Islam, a wali, or “friend of God”), a shaykh, or teacher who continues transmitting the pure teaching directly from the prophetic line to right now. 

The saintly ones are the ones who get it right, which is true in all paths, all religions, the most dimensional and open-hearted of us, who have submitted totally to their Path, who have yearned for the original light and then tasted its color, and who then bring it into the world around them with the sparest of means and the subtlest and most meaningful of gestures.  This is true Islam, the Muslim faces that reflect the moon-face of the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, as lesser satellites that appear in every generation to transmit its milky rays.

What do they transmit?  Those “milky rays” (and milk is a metaphor in Islam for wisdom) show us a new way of seeing existence, our own and the world’s, as a manifestation of God’s love and mercy, his Ninety Nine Names of Justice and Forbearance, Life and Provision and all the rest, to attest to us that everything, but everything, comes from Allah, always and forever.  This meeting of ourselves with someone of this light in a human form brings about a vast dimensional expansion out of our habitual narrow view.  And in so doing, we now see mountains that before were just mountains, and oceans that before were just oceans, and all peoples’ hearts hurting to be healed and all partaking of the prophetic light accessible to us through dream, the constant practice of the prophetic teaching, prayer as connection, and courteous behavior, both to everyone in the creation and every creature, and to The Creator.

But these may not be special people, recognized saintly people, but often are the ones we don’t notice, workers in a factory, street cleaners, teachers in a desert school, heartfelt humans of all kinds and strata, even of all religions and ways.  In Islam, however, the core and hub of the great wheel that radiates out to all of us is Allah and His Prophet, peace be upon him, and when that is the hub, every sincere radiance is clear and bright.  Of course, as always, some people pervert that light, and Satan is the great and proudest perverter of the light, he who would not bow down to Adam at God’s request but stubbornly thought he was greater in his worship of Allah, in his unbending pride.  Opposite to this, there is a vast certainty and humility in those who manifest the beauty of the Prophet’s heart, and the greatest majority of Muslims exceed in a selfless hospitality to make human life sweet.  This is the great beauty of Islam, the light that shows us the reality of Allah’s Majesty and Grace in the soft and generous hearts of the Muslims.

Copyright 1/27/06 by Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore, an American Muslim poet and artist.