And because He—glorified be He—loves beauty, He has sent down for His servants garments and adornment to grace their outward selves, and taqwa (piety) to grace their inner selves. He said: “O children of Adam! We have sent down to you clothing to cover your nakedness and as adornment, but the garment of taqwa—that is better” (al-Aʿrāf 26). Concerning the people of Paradise He said: “He will meet them with brightness and joy, and will reward them, for the patience they showed, with a Garden” (al-Insān 11–12). Thus He beautified their faces with radiance, their hearts with joy, and their bodies with silk.

Just as He, exalted is He, loves beauty in words and deeds, in dress and in appearance, He detests ugliness in words and deeds, in clothes and in appearance; He hates the ugly and its people, and He loves the beautiful and its people.

Yet two groups have gone astray in this matter.

The first group maintain: “Everything He created is beautiful; therefore He loves everything He created, and we must love everything He created, hating nothing of it. Whoever looks at created things as coming from Him sees them all as beautiful.” One of their poets recites:
If you behold all beings through their sight,
Everything the universe contains is fair.

They adduce as evidence His words: “He who perfected everything He created” (al-Sajdah 7); “It is the handiwork of Allah, who has perfected all things” (al-Naml 88); and “You will not see in the creation of the All-Merciful any disparity” (al-Mulk 3). In their view, the true knower is the one who declares unfettered beauty and sees nothing ugly at all in existence. Such people have lost all protective jealousy for Allah from their hearts, along with hatred and enmity for His sake, the rejection of wrong, striving in His path, and the upholding of His limits. They deem the beauty of male and female forms to be a beauty beloved to Allah, and thus they turn their very debauchery into worship! Some of them even go so far as to claim that the deity they worship