AESTHETIC TASTE AND ITS IMPACT ON THE REINFORCEMENT OF MORAL VALUES -IN LIGHT OF THE QURʾĀN AND THE SUNNAH-

Abstract

Islam has devoted profound and sustained attention to the cultivation of aesthetic sensibility in the human being, striving to firmly instill it within the individual from early childhood, with the aim of enabling psychological and physical harmony with the teachings of Islam. These teachings are embodied in the legal commands and prohibitions that refine the Muslim’s character and morals across the various stages of life. As a result, the individual becomes appreciative of every noble moral quality, practices it, and instinctively recoils from every reprehensible trait, distancing himself from it, after his inner self has been imbued with the character of Islamic ethics.

The function of vicegerency (istikhlāf) on earth, which was assigned to humankind from the outset, inherently requires both outward and inward skills and capacities that must be present in the one entrusted with this role. Positivist or man-made systems have never been able—nor will they ever be able—to formulate such capacities within the human being honored by God Almighty, except through His revealed law and upright methodology. This divinely ordained system continuously refines the human being from the earliest stages of formation through its comprehensive and integrative rulings, which mutually reinforce one another, in order to bestow upon him both inner and outer beauty.

Through this process, human collectives entrusted with vicegerency are formed, embodying the authentic human model intended by God Almighty—a model whose form is perceived as beautiful and whose essence is deeply sensed by every connoisseur of true, integrative beauty, both outwardly and inwardly. In this manner, the forces of evil on earth gradually wither away and disappear.