Excerpt from Shaykh Hamza Yusuf’s “Climbing Mount Purgatorio: Reflections from the Seventh Cornice”:
The spiritual power of women is great, but so too is the power of their physical attraction to men. It is this power that causes vile men to want to dominate women, and virtuous men to honor and protect them. But that physical power of the female form over men is a sensory power that veils men from her metaphysical meaning. Her sensual form prevents the man lost in carnality from knowing her spiritual reality, that she is the source of mercy in the world. The Arabic and Hebrew word for womb (rahm) is derived from the word for mercy (rahma) and an expression of the creative power of God in man. In degrading woman, we degrade the highest qualities of our human nature; in elevating her, we elevate our highest nature. When her natural virtues—compassion, kindness, caring, selflessness, and love—predominate in men, men are able to overcome their natural vices and realize their full humanity. When, however, those virtues are absent, men descend to the lowest of the low and are worse than beasts. In unveiling the outward beauty of a woman, we become veiled from her inward beauty.
As a poet from the distant past wrote:
I said to my rose-cheeked lovely, “O you with bud-like mouth,
Why keep hiding your face, like flirting girls?”
She laughed and said, “Unlike the beauties of your world,
In the veil I’m seen, but without it I’m hidden.”
