The discipline gave me a sense of achievement. Not least, fasting is a test of willpower and, whenever I felt my willpower weakening, I would tell myself that I could eat as much as I wanted after sunset. But then the strange thing was that after fasting all day long, I tended to feel full of just a small snack.

— Kristiane Backer

The essence of the Hajj is Arafat. On the ninth day of the Hajj month all pilgrims gather on the great Plain of Arafat to offer their deepest heartfelt prayers. It’s a reminder of Resurrection, when everyone will stand “naked” before God on Judgement Day and nothing counts but our actions and their effects upon our soul’.

— Kristiane Backer

Then Gait old me about the famous cup of the heart, which I should now begin to empty. The Sufi's compare our spiritual heart, the seat of God within us, with a cup into which the love of God flows. This cup, however, needs to be emptied before it can be filled with Divine love. This emptying is a long process that requires courage, strength of character, determination, and, above all, sincerity. It is a process of reining in and eventually extinguishing the ego, of letting go of material needs, bad and unhealthy habits and emotional attachments in order to make room for God. Sufi soften likened it to the process of dying and being born again. ‘Die before you die’ is a famous Sufi saying. This was the essence of every spiritual path, Gait old me.

— Kristiane Backer

The way we experience the pilgrimage is a reflection of our inner state,’ the imam said. ‘To some of us it will be a strenuous trial, whereas to others every step of the way is a joy, despite the privations and discomfort.

— Kristiane Backer

The words of the Quran all seemed strangely familiar yet so unlike anything I had ever read before,’ he told us. He embraced Islam in 1977, and changed his name to Yusuf, the Arabic for Joseph. ‘I identified with the story of Joseph in the Quran,’ he said. ‘His brothers sold him like goods in the marketplace.’ Yusuf felt the music business had treated him not like an artist but as a commodity.

— Kristiane Backer

When you accept Islam, you don’t cease to be the person you were before in your identity and culture,’ he told me. ‘The only thing that Islam does is make you stronger in your identity in terms of actualizing your personality, and in understanding who you are, what you’re supposed to do and what the purpose and meaning of your life is.

— Kristiane Backer

When you see that earthly powers are not listening to you, that you are under siege in this city for four years and shot at without the international community doing anything to help, what should you do? Die?’ he asked me in the course of our conversation. ‘No, you pray to Heaven for help.

— Kristiane Backer

You have returned from the lesser jihad to the greater jihad (jihad Akbar).” His followers asked him what that greater jihad was. “The struggle against your passionate soul,” he replied.‘So what does this greater jihad entail?’ I asked him.‘It is the effort to practice our faith,’ Gas replied. ‘To pray five times every day is an effort, to veil one’s selfish desires and conduct life in accordance with Islamic ethics and laws. The greatest “spiritual warriors” are the saints armed not with weapons but with prayer and prayer beads.’ While it all made sense I wanted to know more about the idea that we needed to go out and fight jihad.

— Kristiane Backer

You may have lost someone, but you’ve found something immeasurably more valuable: God,’ she told me. ‘And God’s love lasts forever.

— Kristiane Backer

You’ve been tested.’ He advised me to try and ‘forgive and pardon, and this way seek to become beloved by God’ without my forgiveness being tied to the one who wronged me. ‘This is the Divine remedy,’ he emphasized, ‘remind your ego when it resists. Don’t you love for God to forgive you on the day, too?’ Reflecting on what the Shaykh said, his advice undid a knot in my heart and I resolved to work on my forgiveness purely for the sake of God. The Shaykh also recommended: ‘Be careful about what you pray for in the future.’ He promised to pray for me personally, asking God to send me a Muslim husband who would value and cherish me for who I am. INSA’ Allah!

— Kristiane Backer