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Hello,
Was the reason the women who watched Joseph’s beauty (peace be upon him) cut their hands that they were morally impure? Or would the same thing have happened if chaste women had been in that situation?
The women cut their hands when they saw Joseph because they were overcome with intense admiration and awe, magnifying Joseph’s beauty while thinking little of themselves. Their rapture made them lose awareness and forget what they were doing; love for anything can be accompanied by a loss of reason.
The reason they cut their hands, regardless of their inner state, their desires and carnal impulses, or their schemes, was their awe of Joseph: on the one hand, they magnified him, and on the other, they made little of themselves. Their intense infatuation left them so overwhelmed and disoriented that they forgot what they were doing and cut their fingers instead of the citrons.
Intense infatuation blinds and dulls a person’s senses and understanding. Love of anything comes at the cost of reason.
و من عشق شیئا أعشى بصره و أمرض قلبه فهو ینظر بعین غیر صحیحه و یسمع بأذن غیر سمیعه قد خرقت الشهوات عقله و أماتت الدنیا قلبه و ولهت علیها نفسه فهو عبد لها و لمن فی یدیه شیء منها حیثما زالت زال إلیها و حیثما أقبلت أقبل علیها لا ینزجر من الله بزاجر و لا یتعظ منه بواعظ و هو یرى المأخوذین
Nahj al-Balagha (ed. Subhi Salih), p. 160
Imam Ali (peace be upon him) said: “Whoever falls in love with something blinds his own eyes and makes his heart ill. The lover sees with a flawed eye and hears with a deaf ear. His passions have crippled his reason, and the world has killed his heart. His soul becomes utterly absorbed in it. He becomes a slave to the world and to those who possess any of it: wherever it turns, he turns with it, and wherever it faces, he faces too. No divine warning can deter him from wrongdoing, and no adviser’s counsel can teach him a lesson.”