One of the greatest problems of humanity is how to live in a multi religious society without losing one's religion - without relativising everything.

In Islam, we believe that it is God himself who is the ultimate guide - Al Hadi - one of the names of God is Al Hadi, the Guide. But at the same time, God has provided within the Islamic revelation the possibility of spiritual guidance through human beings, because then everyone can have direct access to God.

Without Sufism, Islam would not have spread into two thirds of what we call the Islamic world.

Why does one need a doctor if God has given us our body and we pray to Him for our help?

If you have a billion Muslims, 900 million of them were not brought into Islam by any kind of invasion, but most of them through the Sufis, because human beings are such that they are affected by people of spiritual character. Certainly when they display nobility and hospitality and gentility and love and are not selfish or aggressive, and they are honest.

Love itself cannot be divorced from the suffering which comes from being separated from the object of love.

In the traditional Islamic world, the hierarchy of the arts was not based on whether they were "fine" or "industrial" or "minor". It was based upon the effect of art on the soul of the human being.