Reminder: How ignorant you are of the beauty of Joseph!

How ignorant you are of the beauty of Joseph! You imagined that Joseph’s beauty was confined to the image, and you assumed that the outward appearance encompassed the whole meaning. How mistaken you were, and how misguided was your soul in its fascination with the surface! Know that if you sought to emulate Joseph’s outward beauty, you would not have won the love of Zuleikha; she would have tired of you, grown weary, and turned away with complete disregard. For the one she truly loved was not an image perceived by the eye, nor a form described by others, but an inner beauty, a beauty of the soul, a beauty of meaning, manifested in piety, chastity, and purity, in the cleanliness of the heart and the clarity of the inner self.
When a person attends only to what is visible and neglects what lies beneath, they have lost the greatest treasure; they are deprived of true beauty, just as one might be denied the stars in the darkness without knowing how they illuminate the hearts. Joseph’s beauty is not in the colour of his skin nor the contours of his face, but in the elevation of his soul, the sincerity of his speech, and the integrity of his inner self. It is a beauty that overflows to those around him, yet eludes the shallow gaze.
O soul, remember that a human being has three faces: the face of appearance, the face of speech, and the face of the inner self. When the inner self is sound, all else is sound; when it is corrupt, all else falls into corruption. How many outward forms have delighted the eyes and captivated the hearts, yet people never realised that the inner self was corrupt, the spirit dark, love a lie, and affection a deceit? Seek the beauty that is unseen, in the piety of the soul and the chastity of the inner self, for in this lies the secret of true love, the admiration that does not fade with the disappearance of outward form, nor perish with the passing of time.
Let us beware of being deceived by appearances, of resting content with a transient image; let us instead strive for meaning, for meaning is eternal beauty. It is Joseph, present in the depths of the soul, who charms not the eyes alone but the hearts themselves. Whoever recognises this beauty in its essence understands the secret of love, and knows how to value a human being rightly, with the eye of reason, not the eye of sight, and with a contemplative heart, not a passing glance.

(by: Dr Mohammed Akram Nadwi, Oxford, 22 Ramadan 1447)