Omid Safi on Radical Love

We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this

episode is Ohmaed Safi. He's one of the leading American Muslim public intellectuals Ohmed is a professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, and for the past seven years he has led the Study of Islam section at the American Academy of Religion. His new book is Radical Love Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition. Hi Ohmaed, Welcome to the show. Thank you, it's good to be with you. I am really happy to have you on.

We're going to spend most of our time talking about your most recent book called Radical Love Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition. But before we go into that, let's start, like we always do, with the parable. There is a grand father who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always

at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that

you do. It's a beautiful parable, and it's one that I've used in some talks, and I think at least once and something that I wrote, UM, I think what I'm most like about that particular parable is that it

really returns moral and spiritual agency back to us. Instead of a conversation that talks about our spiritual path as being something that is destined up in heaven, which it very well might be, UM, it talks about the fact that the world is not divided between good nations and bad nations, good religions and bad religions, good communities and

bad communities, or even good people and bad people. That every single one of us is somehow a work in progress, that every single one of us has these tensions inside of us, and it's a matter of which garden with water, which tendencies in us we're going to be feeding in that sense, uh. And so I like the fact that it calls us back simply to where we are human beings with a sense of agency and the ability not to control anybody else on the planet, but to say,

my spiritual journey begins with me. I am in charge of the actions that I take. And I think that's a really powerful starting point for any kind of a process of transformation. I agree and it makes me think of something that I got a lot of in your book Memories of Mohammed, Why the Prophet Matters, And it's just something I hadn't heard. I mean, I learned a lot in that book. But you talk about how in Islam,

love and justice are seen to be intrinsically connected. You say that um In other words, before there can be a social movement, there has to be a spiritual awakening. In fact, one could say that attempts to ameliorate the lives of human beings by forgetting about the spiritual need to uplift humanity simultaneously or doomed to be counterproductive and in fact lead to the further fraction of humanity. One must upload all of the human being, including the heart

and soul. But it was really that love and justice being so tied together in the tradition that was really revealing to me. Yeah, And as is the case with so many other beautiful teachings on the planet, no one has a monopoly on them. So of course we encounter the same teaching as you know, in the heart of the Jewish faith, the Christian faith. I think all of us who are students and participants in the great American freedom movement known as you know, the black led civil

rights movement. UM. You know, we all know that all that we mean by justice is love when it comes into the public spaces. Uh. And not surprisingly in the Islamic tradition, that very same UM teaching is contained in the Koran and the teachings of Muhammad. UM by linking together the notion of justice and the idea of how do we live a life that makes beauty real, that make love be something that we actually do with one

another towards one another UM. And I think what it has to do for me in terms of the conversations that I see around us in so many different parts of the world is UM. I see a lot of people who are rightly and beautifully engaged in the process of spiritual transformation, right go into all kinds of retreats

and maybe listening to podcasts like yours, UM. And and then I also see many people who have a sense that something is fundamentally broken in our social fabric, that the way that our society is dividing up our finite resources is neither good nor just, nor sustainable nor beautiful.

And I think what the heart of the Islamic tradition has to offer us is that these two attempts at transformation have to be brought together because they're actually part of one and the same movement that in order to transform the self, we have to have an understanding of ourselves that's already integrated with the world. And if we want to change the world, right, everybody wants to save the world, we are already embedded in the world. So a rotten self embedded in a transformed world is going

to lead to a rotten world. So somehow this is what our Jewish friends would call tikun olam, right, It's that healing of the world, which is also involved with the process of spiritual transformation. And I think this is really one of the great gifts that these wise and ancient spiritual traditions have to offer us. It's a topic that has definitely been on my mind more so lately. We had a guest last week. I don't know if

you're familiar with his work. His name's Terry Patton, and he just wrote a book called A New Republic of the Heart, and it really is one of the best writings about this idea that we have to do both these things simultaneously. I thought it was really good, and he was. He was a great guest. So your latest book is called Radical Love, and it's a translation of a lot of I don't know if you'd call him poems or teachings from the Islamic mystical tradition. And you

did the translation on all these, Is that correct? I did um. I went back to the Qoran, the words of Muhammad, as well as some of the beautiful teachings and poetry of great lovely souls like Rumi and hafez Um, whom many people have heard of, but also many mystics who might be less familiar to people. It makes me think of something else you wrote in the book Memories of Mohammed, and it's it's I just thought it was funny. And I love to bring in animals anytime I can.

Into conversation. You say, an old joke about the Arabic language is that every word has four layers of meaning, a basic meaning, a secondary meaning opposite to the basic meaning, something related to camels, and a fourth obscure layer of meaning. And you're kind of talking in that around that about how fundamental camels were to that time and place in history. But like I said, I thought that was funny, and anytime I can bring a camel into the show, I'm

going to do it. It's a good thing. And you know, the other thing that's really important about it is there's so many You started the show with a parable, and there's so many of the Biblical parables, which are all puns on the names of animals or other creatures that are used in scripture. So um, you know when you read some of these parables, like it's easier for rich Man to get into heaven then for a camel to

pass through the eye of a needle. Right. Um. A lot of these kinds of parables involved puns in Hebrew or Aramaic or Syriac languages that Jesus spoke, or similar puns in the Arabic language, and sometimes when we translate them to English, you know, it's almost like we forget about the delicacy of that creative humor that was part

of the original context. Yes, so let's jump into your new book, and let's start with a story that you tell pretty early on about a story where everybody is gathered before God and then there's a series of questions asked to them and I think you know the one I'm talking about. Yeah, it's a you know, it's a lovely story. It comes up in the poetry of of Attar and Uh. Attar was a giant of Islamic spirituality, also a poem. It also someone who compiled the lives

of saintly beings before him. Um. There are some legends that he might have met ROOMI when Roomie was a young boy and Attar was an old man. And what's really lovely about the story is that it takes place in the hereafter, So it's it's a saint having a dream of the day of judgment to come, and God collects all the people who have ever been and who shall forever be uh, and he says to them, you know,

who here wants to have every worldly pleasure? Well, you know, nine out of ten people raised their hand and they're like, yep, that sounds pretty good. And the voice of God comes to them and says it is granted onto you, and so they leave, and then you know, they hear the voice of God come in and saying who here wishes to be spared all suffering? No more pain, no more fire, no more torments, no more hell fire. Well, you know.

Of the ones who are left, nine out of tend raised their hand and the voice of God comes to them, saying, it is granted onto you. There's but a handful of people left, and they hear the voice of God again. Who here wishes to be given access to my loftiest paradise, a garden that no I has ever seen? Well, you know, it sounds pretty nice. And so nine out of ten people raise their hands again, and they hear the voice

of God coming and saying it is granted onto you. Um. And that when those people leave, there's just four or five people left, and this time they experienced the voice of God thundering at them, saying to them, I gave you every worldly pleasure. I offered you salvation from pain. I gave you a chance at my loftiest garden, and you chose none of it. What are you here for? And these folks lower their head in humility, and they

simply answer, we came for you, We came for you. Uh. And then one last time to hear the voice of God coming to them, saying, in that case, I am yours, I am yours uh. And I think the path of love at the end of the day is about a group of seekers who are in it for God's own heart. This is not about salvation. It's not about getting into heaven um, nor is it about somehow going on a spiritual high. It really is a sense of choosing to walk the path for the sake of the ultimate beloved.

And they know that in order to love God, we have to love God's people, which is all of us. That if you want to get to that beloved, then we've got to learn to love the beloved around us. And that's the most difficult thing to do, is to love human beings. God is easy. Human beings are hard, indeed they are. So let's move into some readings from the book. I was thinking we could start with I

was thinking we might start with page twenty eight. This is, you know, a passage that is attributed to the prophet Muhammad um and it will sound a lot like the oracle that we know from Greek thought. But at het arafa rope he um to know God intimately, intimately know yourself. He who knows his his own soul knows his Lord. And it's a favorite saying of the mystics because what it signifies to them is that the knowledge of the divine and the knowledge of our own heart and soul

are actually linked up together. Just as if we want to love God, we have to learn to love humanity. If we want to know God, we have to get to know ourselves. We have to get to know what makes us tick, because if we don't, then we're drinking from a dirty cup. And we might think that we're pouring water or wine into it. But if your cup is dirty, then so will your drink be. Um. So this notion of who are we? Who are we? Where? Is? What are the dark corners of our own soul? And

where are the cracks where the light pours in? I think this is one of the teachings of this tradition. Yeah, that makes me think of something that you wrote, um, I think in one of your blog posts. But I'm just gonna read it because it really struck me, and I've never heard it articulated this well. But you say the contraction of the heart what might be called the dark knight of the soul, and Christian spirituality is also

part of the path. This is one of the differences between any genuine spiritual path and New Age spiritual fluff, which promises abundant happiness and fulfillment without any parallel process of suffering, penitence and repentance. And I've never been able to articulate what it is about some of the New Age stuff. Besides some of it seeming patently absurd to me, but what else about it sort of irked me? And

you put your finger on it right there. It's this something for nothing feeling that I get, which I don't think is the way life works. It's not the way life works. And it's also not the way of that I think any genuine spiritual path works. I would be extremely suspicious if I went to um a meditation session, or a Dharma talk, or a Sufi talk, or for that matter, a megachurch and the person standing up front said, um,

follow me, and I promise you happiness. I promise you happiness. UM. I think in some ways this is one of the great heresies. And I don't use that word lightly of a lot of com modified, commercialized spirituality. It's the gospel of success. Follow me, because God wants to make you rich. Well, then what do you do when your father, your mother comes down with cancer? Um? What do you do when the person that you might love the most in this

world leaves you. Um, what do you do, as many people have had to do, if you have to take care of your sick child or Heaven forbid, Heaven forbid bury your own child? Right? Does that mean that at that moment God hates you, that God has forsaken you? Um? I think any real spiritual path has to be a path that takes you to the mountaintop and is also with you deep in the valley, And it has to tell you that it's the same God who is the God of the mountaintop, who is the lord of the

bottom of the valley. And there are resources and teachings that you can practice deep down in the valley as you can on the mountaintop. And I think that's why when I listen to spiritual teachings, I always pay attention to Yes, there has to be the talk of love and expansion and transformation, but I also want to know is there talk of sacrifice? Right? Is there something that they tell us up front you're going to have to give up if you actually want to be transformed? Um?

Is there talk of the need for some kind of ritual, because you know, getting up in the morning and having a donut and eating cheetos and surfing the web, and you know, watching twelve hours of TV a day Cheeto flavored doughnuts, fairly certain is probably not the most luminous path towards being transformed. Tell me what I need to do? Whom do I have to love? How do I serve? How do I get over my own damn self? How do I get beyond this illusory confine of the ego?

And that is sacrifice, And many people actually experienced it as a kind of death. It's a death of a self centered world view, which is a necessary part of the growth where at some point we learned. And this is where love comes in. It's not all about me, it never has been. Love makes it about you. Love projects you beyond yourself, and I think any real path has to offer you that. So I would want to see ritual transformation, sacrifice and community. Now we're not meant

to live alone. We're meant to be together. We're meant to have these people who mirror to us beautiful qualities that we might not be able to see in ourselves, and they mirror to us some places that we've got to keep working on. One of the other things I was struck with in the book, And we're going to move to a couple of these right now. Was you often say, when you boil a tradition down to its mystical tradition, they all start to look very much the same.

But there were a couple of the readings that really struck me a lot as being in line with um, you know, some of the Buddhist idea of non self or less ego. And I thought we could start on page thirty eight and you could read that went for us as a starting place on a couple of those that caught my eye. So thirty eight is only God

has the right to say I and UM. I mean this is an extraordinary statement because I think ultimately, if we keep thinking of ourselves as even a rival to God, to say that is to say that we conceive of ourselves as existing outside of God. And there is a type of humility that actually opens you up to the whole universe. Why do we think we're so small? Why do we think we are so finite? How lovely would it be if we actually say we are part of this vast tapestry. I am a drop in the osha

in and I am part of the ocean. In that sense, the minute that I let go of my drop nous Um, I can see myself as being part of this ocean Um. So you know it's um. There's another saying a few pages later that says, finding my Lord, I lost my heart. Finding my heart, I lost my Lord. So I think some of these initial parts of the path where we realize that the greatest temptation, the greatest idol for us is not that we're bowing down in front of an

idol or a statue out there. We worship our own self. It's it's the worship of the ego. It's um, your three favorite gods, your holy Trinity, being me, myself and I. And that has to be shattered, that has to be broken, it has to be given up at some point. So I think it's at that stage that these mystics are encouraging us, pleading with us to rise above and see ourselves as part of this greater union. So let's go on to another one that I think speaks to this

really eloquently. And of course I just picked one. I mean, there's so many of them in here, I just had to pick a few that spoke to me particularly, and I'm sure if I picked the book up on a different day, I'd have different ones. But this one is on page fifty four. I always love seeing which sayings and which teachings speak to different people, because I've never had, you know, two people picked the same set of teachings

that speak with them. So this was that poem called this and that which is you know, really about that great ultimate mystery of how do we have a beloved who is so manifest? Um? You know, when you're walking in the woods you experienced that sense of closeness to to the divine, or when you're in the mountains or by a notion, you know, maybe holding your child. And then at the same time, God is also hidden. And it's not that God is simply um invisible to us.

It's that even the most luminous of people have at least an occasional experience a feeling like they can't experience the sacredness of God. Um. You know, even in Jesus at one point says, you know, Father, why have you forsaken me? Right? So this is what this particular poet is talking about. This and that he says, you are manifest, you are hidden both not this not that yet this and that, how can you be manifest when you're always hit and how can you be hidden when you're eternally

playing to see? And I'm willing to bet that you could find Hindu and Buddhist teachings of course that that that resonate with this teaching very much. And I think that's sometimes one of the greatest challenges of spiritual life is these moments where we feel so connected and we see so clearly and we're full of love, and then another day it's almost were breaft of those things, and that is such a challenging thing to deal with and

knowing how to deal with it wisely it is. And that's why I think a life that is in commune with nature offers us such a way forward, because nature operates through exactly these kinds of cycles. Um. You know, you pay attention to the beating of your own heart. Your heart contract acts and then it expands, and it is actually the dance between the contraction and the expansion that gets blood going all over your body. You need the contraction in order to propel the blood everywhere. Look

at this story night. Yes, the north star might always be there, but the moon waxes and wanes from a full moon to a crescent, and there's a night or two every cycle that you don't see them. So I think for people who are trying to figure out how to live with our spiritual life that has its own cycles, this sense of staying in commune with nature can be a really powerful way forward. Great, well, let's finish up the readings on this sort of topic on page sixty four.

This is a great wonderful saintly being that I'm very fond of. Um. You know, it's one thing to translate roomy and off as that everybody has heard of them. But then you get to work on some of these people like karani Uh and he's new to a lot of people, but every bit the giant that those others are. So it's a very short passage. It says, they ask where do you see God? He said, wherever I don't see myself. So again, these are the different parts of

the path. You have to know yourself to know God, that your path to God can go through you yourself. But then you also have to get over yourself. You have to be willing to transcend yourself. You have to be willing to say it's not all about me, and ironically, the less of yourself that you see the more of the divine. And I love all those because I think

they speak to that da of less ego. And you can think about that a lot of different ways traditions talk about it, but it really points to the upside of lou seen that ego is, is that that ego is often what blinds us from you know, God or oneness or you know awakening or call it. Use the term that your tradition likes. Um. I just thought those were beautiful readings. So those readings all came from a

section of the book called God of Love. And then you have another section of the book called Path of Love. And I thought maybe we could hop over to page seventy nine and I'll take a look at one of those. And this gets back to the conversation we were having a little bit earlier about a genuine spiritual path not being all unicorns. That there is. You know that there's both the top of the mountain, as you said in

the Valley. Well, you know, I would say, I don't know much about unicorns, but I know something about roses. I would say the path is in fact all roses as long as you remember that real roses have thorns, and that somebody who loves a row has to be willing to endure being pricked by thorne every now and then. Um, the real spiritual path teaches you how to navigate your own suffering. And this poem called pain you can also

easily translated the suffering. How do you ever expect for your heart to become polished like a mirror without putting up with the pain of polish? And it's a Roomy poem. And oftentimes when he would write about this notion of suffering, he had a very vivid metaphor in mind, which was in those days when people's homes would be covered with these fantastic Persian and Turkish tribal carpets, Um, they would

get dusty. So once a week people would take their carpets out into the street and they would beat them with a stick so that all the dirt that their feet had dragged in would fall off of the carpet. And as Roomy is sitting there watching these beautiful carpets being beaten, he also sees the dust coming off, and he says to himself, this is what suffering does to

my own heart. A question for you, because this is a question I ask a lot of guests because I'm really intrigued by it, is that we all know that suffering and hardship can be a polishing event for us. It can be grist for the mill. It can can make us into stronger, better people, but it doesn't always. We all know people who are broken by suffering or

who become bitter and closed from suffering. For you, what are some of the fundamental things that allow people some people to transform suffering into I'll just use the word positive because I don't have a better word for it off the top of my head. But do use suffering in a in a good way versus being broken or bittered by it? So I think I usually think about um too simple points into a conversation that is anything

but simple. Uh. And the starting point for me, exactly as you said, is what a difference there is between people whose heart breaks, whether it is in a romantic context, it is in the context of witnessing war and occupation and poverty, um, whether it's in the context of seeing a loved one struggle with disease and that breaks a heart. There are people whose heart breaks, and there are people whose heart breaks open, and there is a huge difference

between those two. So I think the first point is sometimes what might seem like the external stimulus might be the same. But somebody who goes through a sickness, goes through poverty, goes through being fired, goes through losing a loved one a divorce, comes out of it a much more beautiful and humble person than they were previously. They see in their fellow human beings of vulnerability and a suffering that maybe before they were not able to notice.

I think that's the first part, and then the second part is as people who aspire to be on the path, I think it's really important when we notice someone who's hurting not to flip through our mental rolodex of spiritual teachings and to think about what do we say to them, Um, they're real. Essential first response to suffering is silence. We sit with people, we behold people, we allow them to share as little or as much, and we hold them uh.

And I think there has to be that holding back of the attempt to say you're hurting, how wonderful, what an extraordinary opportunity for spiritual growth this is for you, Because that may not be what that friend needs to hear at that time. Um. So to begin with silence, with genuine empathy and compassion, um, And to let whatever teachings it is that we're in such a rush to share, let that be something that speaks through our being and

our presence and our action rather than necessarily through our words. Yeah. There's nothing really more annoying than someone when you're in a lot of pain, it's like, well, this is an opportunity to grow or an opportunity to learn. I always find it such an interesting balance because I do think that ultimately remembering that as a person who's in suffering can be useful at point, absolutely not as an escape,

but as a perspective. Yeah. And a very related aspect of that is you see someone whose heart is broken and is suffering, and our first response is I know exactly how you feel, because let me tell you about all these things that have happened to me. And I think I myself have been guilty of that on more occasions than I would care to admit. Um. Because the person who's hurting isn't really interested in that moment about

hearing your life chronicle. They want to be seen, They want to be heard they want to be embraced and they need to be embraced. I agree, and that is an easy one to fall into. A desire to empathize and share, like, yeah, you're not alone, can very easily become me, me, Me, me me. Okay, So let's talk about page eight nine. So this one says the Sufi path one could substitute any kind of a path. Is this You own nothing, nothing owns you. You own nothing,

nothing owns you. Um, and I think you know this I of owning nothing. That can be a little deceiving, right, I mean, these are people, after all, they have clothes, they might live in a house, they have food. But I think to realize that ultimately we're not the masters of the things, and more importantly, the people around us. I mean, there's a wonderful quote from Jalil Gibron. Your children are not yours, they're the universe is calling for itself. Yeah,

that's a great one. And nothing owns you. I mean, how ironic is it that so many of us define what it means to live a successful life to be that we live in a big enough house, or in the kind of neighborhood or in the kind of zip code, that we didn't have to work like a dog to be able to afford to live in that house, in that neighborhood, in that zip code. And in that sense, I think it's worth asking who owns whom, who's working for whom? Does the house serve us or we serve

in the house? Are we serving our things, our car our life expectation and standards? So you know, I think if we're able to think of being able to perceive the universe as moving through us without the need for us to cling to them, that might be a more beautiful way of living. Yeah, I think that's a great way to say it. And I really like this one too,

for the reasons you articulated. I'm not sure if I read it, if it's something that you wrote that I read, or if you know, things get mingled together for me. But this idea of you know, nothing is permanent and the recognizing there one analogy or one story I know is the Buddhist teacher an Chaw talking about a cup and he says, you know, to me, this cup is already broken because he can see that's the that's the ultimate destiny of it, that's where it's going to go.

And by by seeing that, by seeing that things are impermanent, that that we don't know if they're going to stay, you know, it really helps us to realize we don't own things. Um, they're on loan to us. All right. The next section of the book is called Beloved Community, and I wanted to just pull a couple of readings from there. Also, maybe we could look at page two twenty one. Yeah, I mean this term beloved community, of course, is my homage to the civil rights tradition and the

people who have embodied this particular kind of teaching. So this is a very famous roomy poem. Um, many people, of course will recognize echoes of the famous Leonard Cohen poem. Right, there's a crack in everything, that's where the light gets in. Yeah, So he's talking about the and the poem is called the wound is where the light enters. You trust your wound to a skilled healer. You can't see the ugly of your own wounds. Flies hover over them, your thoughts.

Your wound is your heart state, unilluminated. The healer this sage puts a band aid on your wound. The pain is gone. You think you healed all by yourself. But no, this the healing was from the light. The wound is where the light enters you. Yeah, and you know there's notion of we are healed by God, of course ultimately, but also in terms of our interactions with one another. And in this context, it's the interaction with the teacher, with the healer, with someone whose very presence can bring

healing to us. And then what we once saw as the wound can come to serve as a memory of the place where this healing enters us. Yeah, I love that one. The next couple I want to look at, I think, are they speak to the beauty of community and they're just great advice on being a friend. So page to thirty four, know the value of your friends and in their company. Forget all the good deeds you did for them, all the good deeds you did for them, forget forget. Um. This is from a beautiful book written

by a Sufi named Salami. It's available in an English translation called the Book of Sufi Chivalry, and it's all about how do we live in friendship with one another? Um? So, I think you know this notion of don't keep an accounting firm responsible for all of the nice things you've done for your friends, do it and set it aside. Yeah, And so the next one is page two thirty six, and this really spoke to me. I mean, a again,

it's just a great way to live. But there's an underlying word that we hear and something that we hear a lot in the personal development space, which is, you know, I hear it in yoga classes a lot. Let go of anything that doesn't serve you. You hear, you know, if somebody causes drama in your life, cut them loose, right. And I recognize that there are people in places that are truly toxic and a distance is needed, and that's the right thing. But I think, again, back to this

spiritual path that's all about me and my happiness. We're often encouraged to sort of like, well, if something is unpleasant for us, we should get it out of our lives. And I love how this reading speaks to that. It does, and I think, you know, the caveats that you put in there of if something is truly dangerous or abusive

kind of for us. And I think it's useful to remember that the mystics that I'm writing about, they operate in the context of a world which has that safety mechanism in place, and for them, UM, that's the notion of UM, a religious law, UM that serves as a kind of protection against murder and theft and rape and

occupation and warmongering and things of that sort. So I think it's really good to avoid those kinds of abusive contexts, but understanding that human beings are difficult and that the greatest annoyances in our life come from the people closest to us. Right, someone cuts you off on the road, You're likely to forget about it ten minutes later. But something that your partner, your mother, your father, your child,

your sibling to you, that could linker for years. So this one is called never leave your friends, show your continuous love and understanding, and never leave your friends because of the inconvenience they may cause. Yeah, I love that. And again I think everything has to be taken with a sense of perspective. And I think some people have a tendency to stay in abuse of an awful situations

way longer than they should. And then I think there's other people who have a tendency to be like, well, I don't like it, so get out, you know, And it's there somewhere in between, you know. It's that you know, middle ground. I think of being willing to say, you know what, the people around me aren't always going to make me happy, and that's not a reason to get rid of them. And there are times where there is plenty of good reason to get rid of them. Um,

So the right perspective is there. But I just I've been to a lot of yoga lately and I keep hearing that let go of anything that doesn't serve you. And there's something about that that I totally understand and makes sense. But there's this other part of me that immediately thinks, but what am I serving? You know? It's that if I'm always looking at what's serving me for me, that is, as we've sort of talked about, not a very good path to be on. So you know, I

think it's equally useful to ask what am I serving? Yeah, it's uh, you know, I think Brother West, Cornell West always has this beautiful saying of every person there's only two questions worth asking, how deep is your love and whom do you serve? Well, we are at the end of our time here, um, you and I are going to continue in a post show conversation, We're going to

talk about two things. We're gonna talk about some of the debates that happen in communities about whether Islam really is a religion that has fundamental problems that lead to the violence we see, and some debates that you've had with that, and I you know, there's some genuine questions I want to ask there. And then we're also going to talk about a little bit more context around the difference between Sunni and Shia and what that really means

in the world. So, listeners, if you're interested in that, you can go to one you feed dot net slash support and uh you can get access to all of the post show conversations, many episodes, add free episodes, etcetera. So thank you so much for taking the time to come on. I've really enjoyed this and as I say occasionally, I could probably do this for another two hours. Listen, it's a pleasure to be with you, and thank you for creating such a beautiful space. Thanks so much. Okay bye.

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