Forty Gems of Beauty — Page 39
39 becomes, generally for women, a source of great trouble. The second is wealth and affluence, which generally put men to a lot of test and temptation. Citing both of these as examples, the Holy Prophet (May peace and blessings of Allah be on him) said that while without a doubt they are great gifts of God, nevertheless, Muslims should take note that Allah does not judge the worth of people by His appraisal of the beauty of women or of the wealth of men. He looks, instead, towards their heads and hearts which are the source and repositories for human thoughts and feelings, and then He looks towards their deeds which are the products of their thoughts and feelings. The word “ qalb ” used in this Hadith stands both for heart and mind, for “qalb” literally means the central point of an organism. The heart and the mind are both, in their respective spheres, centres of the bodily organism, the mind being the centre of overt feelings and the heart that of spiritual experience. By using the words “qul u b” [hearts] and “a‘m a l” [deeds], the Holy Prophet (May peace and blessings of Allah be on him) in this context, has pointed out that, though physical beauty and material wealth are gifts of God and one should value them, what God takes note of is the heart [“qalb”] of people and their [“a‘m a l”] actions. It is, therefore, the duty of every Muslim to seek to improve his mind, heart and actions, instead of taking pride in the gifts of physical beauty and property and worldly goods. It must be borne well in mind that the Holy Prophet’s (May peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) admonition that God, the Excellent, watches the heart and deeds of man, means not only that these things will weigh on him on the Day of Requital, but also that in this world too, real weight is given to feelings of the heart and the motives of the mind and the actions of limbs. The truth is that once a people are granted the favour that the heads and hearts and limbs of its members start operating in the right direction, no power can