Our civilisation is based on what is beautiful, good, true and useful. When our Lord created insan [man, the human being], he was predestined to be the most honourable and thus the most beautiful. In a hadith, our beloved Prophet advises us to always be beautiful. Likewise, our revered master [Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, a 13th-century Islamic scholar and poet] says: "He who contemplates in a beautiful way sees beautifully; he who sees beautifully thinks beautifully; and he who thinks beautifully receives pleasure from life." (Recep Tayyip Erdoğan 2017) Turkey is now one of the top ten countries with the most cosmetic surgeons per capita and the most cosmetic procedures in the world (ISAPS 2019), and its cultural and economic capital Istanbul has become a regional centre of the beauty and fashion industry. When Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan spoke the above words to some 2,500 almost exclusively female beauty entrepreneurs at a rally broadcast live on national television in late March 2017, he invoked several authoritative Muslim sources to invoke the idea of a common "civilisation" based on beauty. He referred to beauty as a moral and aesthetic, even sacred value, because what is beautiful is also good, true, useful and honourable. Superficially, the speech accompanied the official signing