Religion isn’t about believing things. It's ethical alchemy. It’s about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness.

Ironically, the first thing that appealed to me about Islam was its pluralism. The fact that the Koran praises all the great prophets of the past.

We are what we are because of the hard work, insights and achievements of countless others.

And sometimes it's the very otherness of a stranger, someone who doesn't belong to our ethnic or ideological or religious group, an otherness that can repel us initially, but which can jerk us out of our habitual selfishness, and give us intonations of that sacred otherness, which is God.

[T]he family is a school of compassion because it is here that we learn to live with other people. (68)

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.

Compassion is not an option. It's the key to our survival.