If it is not tempered by compassion, and empathy, reason can lead men and women into a moral void.

Religions have found that if you behave in a certain way, if you sort of perform certain rituals that expand your mind and make you realize that will make you realize and help you to seguey into transcendence and perform certain acts, adopt a certain lifestyle, you develop new capacities of mind and heart, just like the dancer, or the athlete that make you into a whole human being and principle after one of these disciplines right across the board in all of the faiths is compassion, the ability to feel with the other person.

We are opinionated society. We're very happy to spout forth our own views; we're not good about listening. We have to listen to other's stories. Learn to listen to the stories of the terrorists just as we hope that they will listen to ours because very often these narratives express frustrations, fears, and anxieties that most societies can safely ignore.

I had failed to make a gift of myself to God.

We constantly have ideas and experiences that go beyond what we can say or know. Most often these are expressed in art, in painting, in music. Music, everyday confronts us with a form of knowing that doesn't depend on words.

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

The hajj is one of the five essential practices of Islam; when they make the pilgrimage to Mecca, Muslims ritually act out the central principles of their faith.