Beauty in Islam: A Letter to My Daughter

My Daughter... Even before you were born, through your kicks and acrobatics, you were known to God, and your beauty in Islam, which is of utmost importance, was known to Him. You were known to God, and your beauty was known to Him before I ever knew you existed.

From the moment I laid eyes on you in the hospital after a difficult labour and delivery, I knew you were beautiful. Your wrinkly newborn features and pained cries only made you more precious to me. 

Sadly, there are forces seemingly greater than you and I that will attempt to decide your worth based solely on your physical appearance and society’s beauty standards. They will tell you that you aren’t beautiful enough for their standards.

They will tell you that your skin is too dark, your hair too curly, your lips too thin or too plump, your body too fat or too slim. That your eyebrows are too thick, and that your feet will only look good in heels.

They’ll tell you that the wrinkles that will eventually form on your face are some kind of barrier between you and happiness. They will try to convince you that you are ugly. They will try to convince you that you are unhappy and that you hate things about yourself. 

They’ll try to convince you that you must purchase things to combat your difficult perceptions of yourself. They will entice you with fragrances and clothes and make-up that will purportedly make you smell, look, and feel less ugly.

They will insist that you are laced with imperfections that only a certain product can fix. They’re wrong. This is not true beauty in Islam. These are not beauty standards in Islam. I promise you that you are beautiful.

I promise you that your nose is the exact right shape for your face and that the curls in your hair and the caramel of your skin are what suit you best because beauty in Islam is not about perfect physical and facial features.

Allah assures that His every creation has been molded in the best of ways. You are beautiful. You don’t need to believe me, but you need to believe your Creator: 

"By the Fig and the Olive,
And the Mount of Sinai,
And this City of security,-
We have indeed created man in the best of molds" [Qur'an 95:1-4] 

Allah (swt) swears by the fig and the olive, and by the mount of Sinai, and by the blessed city of Makkah that you are perfect. I’ve eaten ripe figs and olives, and I’ve climbed Mt. Sinai, and I hope that one day soon I will be blessed to visit the sacred house in Makkah.

These are not minor things to swear by. Figs and olives are two of the most strangely delicious things that grow on trees. They are the source of livelihood for many and the trees on which they grow originate from lands where many prophets came from. 

In some commentaries of the Quran, they say that these lands are Syria and Palestine. Mt. Sinai and the surrounding mountain ranges are frighteningly vast, rocky, and seemingly desolate.

When you stand on the peak of the mountain and survey the landscape, there is nothing around except more rocky mountains as far as the eye can see. It is in this area that a part of the story of Musa (as) and the Children of Israel takes place.

After having escaped the grips of Pharaoh. A group of them were lost in those mountains for 40 years because they disobeyed God’s orders. And the city of Makkah is where so much of our history began and Ibrahim and his son (as) built the sacred house.

Where the Prophet Muhammad (saw) smashed the idols and re-established the worship of the One True God. Where we go at least once in our lives to reaffirm and reconnect with Allah, and walk in the footsteps of the final messenger.

The prophet Muhammad (saw) also taught us, upon looking at our reflection in the mirror, to say “O Allah, just as You have made my external features beautiful, make my character beautiful as well.”

This dua presupposes that you are beautiful. The Prophet (saw) didn’t ask only those who considered themselves beautiful to utter these words. These words are suited for every single person regardless of physical features.

Because beauty in Islam is in one’s character. So now that you know you are beautiful, you should also know that true beauty in Islam is in the way you live your life, so your physical beauty doesn’t actually matter… 

"We have indeed created man in the best of molds
Then do We abase him (to be) the lowest of the low,-
Except such as believe and do righteous deeds: For they shall have a reward unfailing."[Quran 95:4-6] 

The Islamic beauty standards are actually the beauty of your mind and heart – that which leads you to worship God alone, with no partners and intermediaries, and that which makes you strive to be better and do better every single day that you are alive.

That is the only true beauty standard in Islam that matters. The desire to attain the pleasure of God through closeness to the example of the Prophet ﷺ is the true beauty in Islam which will help you enter Paradise with a reward that has no end. 

You may be physically beautiful but if you are a terrible person and if you reject God, your beauty will only be skin-deep, and it will be short-lived. The ugliness of your heart will soon overshadow the beauty you see.  

What you wear doesn’t matter. Brands don’t matter. The things you own, if used selfishly, proudly and without care or consideration for others will only cause you to be regretful on the Last Day.

All that is in your hands will perish, except what you have spent from it in the cause of Allah. You can certainly love white or black, pink or blue, green or purple. The Prophet ﷺ, too, had a favourite colour.

You can dress according to your preferences and culture, within the limits of modesty. That’s normal and natural. To deny our desire to clothe ourselves well and to look good is to deny a part of our humanness. 

So, dress modestly and neatly. Make sure your body is clean and that you care about the cleanliness of your surroundings.  Brush your teeth. Brush your hair. Keep your body healthy.

These things are a trust given to you by God to take care of. And that’s the complete and holistic way of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. Outer cleanliness, neatness, modesty and health are actually tools we should use to enhance our worship.

The external needs to be taken care of, but do not be fixated on it. In fact, you can wear clothes that are considered to be out of style, I don’t care. You do not owe anyone a wardrobe of shoes that perfectly match every outfit.

You do not owe anyone a wardrobe that is continuously updated with what’s in style. You definitely do not have to keep up with the potentially detrimental “hijab trends.” You can wear the same thing several days in a row, as long as the clothes are clean.

You’ll soon realize that this is just not what matters most. You can go out with dark circles under your eyes without feeling like you must cover them up with concealer. If you are exhausted from this world better then build yourself a home in paradise.

Through the Mercy and Forgiveness of Allah wear those dark circles with happiness. They do not make you less beautiful. They make you absolutely stunning. Your perfection is a testament to the perfection of your Creator, not to your ability or worth.

Because you didn’t decide what gender you’d be or who your parents would be or what you’d look like. Allah decided all of that. You are beautiful because God created you that way.

So, when you look in the mirror and ponder over the unparalleled precision and exactness of your fingers and toes, the shape of your face, the arch of your eyebrows and the intricacies of each part of you, praise God that He created you in such perfection.

Always consider how you can achieve Islamic beauty standards in your life. And then strive to have that perfection reflected within your heart and your character. Most important of all, the knowledge that you are made beautiful, will place in your hands something incredibly powerful: your time.

In the absence of striving to attain a distorted and unattainable standard of physical beauty established by self-serving corporations, you will have time to strive for a better state for your soul, a better state for your family, and a better state for the world by striving to reach Islamic beauty standards.

You won’t be bogged down with trying to figure out what make-up routine best suits your features, what outfits match best, and what brands are the most popular. Instead, you can spend that time reading, worshiping, learning, laughing, changing, teaching, because that is how you can achieve Islamic beauty standards, and this indeed is the essence of beauty in Islam.