As one travels throughout the world, one runs into different political systems, different religious systems, different cultures. One of the things that people notice as they travel throughout the world is that religions change in different parts of the world. People view their relationship with God within a certain framework that is different from one …
The mind is our closest and most constant companion. We have lots of friends who know a little bit about us and who spend time with us and have known us for different portions of our lives, but our mind has known us since we were born. And depending on the acuity of our memory, …
We live in a world of form, and each of us is encased in form. Yet we are told that reality exists in a formless state, that He is beyond form and description. The Quran prohibits the use of images. The Torah prohibits the use of images. And many of the Protestant churches don’t use …
I grew up in a small town, a farming community. And while I lived there, that little place to me was the center of the universe. I thought that’s the way things were, and all examples of everything could be found within the confines of the small town that I grew up in. Travelling was …
The great saint Rabia said, “I don’t desire heaven, and I don’t fear hell,” a well-known iconic statement. What’s it mean? In the understanding of things at the end of times, people are going to be doing things for two reasons and two reasons only. They are going to be looking for rewards, a desire …
We speak of this life and the next life. We speak of the time before this earthly body occurred and the time after. This body as we know it disappears. Well, if we are talking about times before, during, and after this body; we must consider what is the function of this body in our …
At the center, at the core, at the apex of religious belief in Islam is the statement of faith, also known as the kalimah. And it is “La illaha il Allah; Muhammadur Rasul-Allah.” What’s interesting is that there are two sections to this, and the second part, “Muhammadur Rasul-Allah” means Muhammad is His Rasul, is …
Recently in Camodia during the reign of someone called Pol Pot in something called the Khmer Rouge…Khmer is an ancient name for Cambodia, and rouge means red. That was to signify the new coming of the new ideas they were bringing into Cambodia which were essentially Communist or at least their idea of communism. There was a …
We live in a world where we understand things through our perceptions. Our perceptions are limited, so the understanding that we can have through our perceptions is a limited understanding. However, we have other faculties besides our senses. In addition to our senses, we have the ability to have faith, to believe things that we …
In the world there are information sources, institutions, individuals, media types, various forms of media, that claim to give you information. And when we’re born, we’re born into all of the existing media outputs that exist in the area where we grow up, where we’re born, where we live. We’re taught to accept these information …
