Islam is a religion of success. Unlike Christianity, which has as its main image, in the west at least, a man dying in a devastating, disgraceful, helpless death. The cross, crucified, and that turned into victory. Mohammad was not an apparent failure. He was a dazzling success, politically as well as spiritually, and Islam went from strength to strength to strength.

My study of religion, which I regard in many ways as an art form, is a search for meaning.

We should probably all pause to confront our past from time to time, because it changes its meaning as our circumstances alter.

It is not difficult to find a religious justification for killing.

You know how it is in the symphony when you are listening to the symphony, the last notes die away, and there's often a beat of silence in the auditorium before the applause begins. It's a very full and pregnant silence. Now theology should bring us to live into that silence, into that pregnant pause.

Like art, religion is an imaginative and creative effort to find a meaning and value in human life.

I used to hate religion, I loathed it in my angry days.