Voice of British Muslim Women

Iffat Mirza, Raynes Park, London

Humankind has sought to commodify everything that has been in his reach. Whether it is our land, our produce, our labour, or our knowledge, humankind has been driven by an inane need to place a price tag on anything and everything. Surely, when everything can be bought, we have to ask ourselves, what is driving us to do so? In some ways, we are still children, in front of whom you can wave some shiny keys to distract them and placate them until they get bored. Likewise, we look for the prettiest thing on the market, and convince ourselves we need it. But what happens when we (unknowingly) place ourselves on the market?

In the digital age that we live in, life is faster than ever. Millions of selfies are uploaded to the internet every day. In uploading selfies, we are seeking external validation, primarily from people with whom we are only briefly acquainted. As the number of likes and comments increase, so does our ego, and we find our thumbs constantly refreshing the page. Likes and comments serve as a currency in the digital world and as we gain them, we slowly but surely begin to commodify ourselves.

And like with any other commodity, we are consistently seeking to update, reinvent, revise ourselves, in order to keep our ‘audience’ entertained. We become motivated by a desire to be more likeable, more attractive, more beautiful. So much so, that we forget what beauty means.

We come to a point where we only see beauty in perfection. It is no surprise then, when we take a look at our imperfect selves, off camera, we refuse to see the beauty that is there. In the age of Instagram, everything is changing, and nothing is authentic. I can say with the utmost confidence that for almost every selfie that is uploaded, at least ten more were taken which will never see the light of day. Can we call such pretences beautiful? John Keats famously wrote ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty;- That is  all ye know on Earth and all ye need to know.’ Searching for beauty in the authentic is ever more prevalent in the age of Instagram.

There is beauty in the tears that supplicate to the Lord. There is beauty in the prayers we utter in secret for those we love. There is beauty in the sweat after a hard day’s work. There is beauty in the storm that nourishes our land, just as there is beauty in the sun that shines after the shower. Yet we turn a blind eye, because this is a beauty that cannot be bought nor sold. It cannot be validated by likes nor comments. It is authentic and unchanging.

We seek to look for beauty in what is false. In the Holy Qur’an, God asks man ‘‘Do you build monuments on every high place seeking vain glory, And you build fortresses and develop industry so that you may last forever?’[1] The Almighty reminds us that such monuments that we erect in ‘vain glory’ of ourselves are simply that. Vain. He also reminds us that this life is temporary, and that neither we nor our beauty, nor our inventions, will last forever.

If we should seek beauty, it should be with the aim of it lasting forever, and as we know, that Instagram will not last forever. So why do we erect statues of ourselves in the form of selfies in hopes to garner a few likes? Is it not, then, wiser to search for beauty in the permanence that we know of, that is God? If we turn to seeking the beauty of the Lord Who created us most lovingly, we will find a beauty that will grant us far greater satisfaction than the validation we seek from our Instagram followers. We must recognise the perceived beauty that we see on social media as false and temporary. In doing so, we will liberate ourselves from the self-imposed commodification, and can return to our authentic selves.

[1] Holy Qur’an Chapter 26 Verses 129-130