Given those creeds, what are the core practices then that Muslims engage in to essentially express thus the creed faith as you described it? The belief will not save you, per say. It will make you Muslim, but what ultimately make you ideal believer, ideal Muslim, is if you take that belief and manifest itself into action. So both belief and action's equally important, in terms of your ability to succeed, fulfill your promise as a human being. So, there are many, many ways in which this belief should make you an ethical, moral human being and therefore that, that belief should be, be a source of drive and motivation to exhibit a set of actions in your life. And that's formalized in the Famous Five Pillars of Islam. You have to do five things. One, the testimony. It's not enough to believe in God, you have to say it. It's the Muslim Shamma, as part of the five daily prayers, we say it 17 times. There is no God but God and Muhammad is the final messenger of God, but not the only. Again, final meaning, acknowledging the prophets before him as well. Second, you have to pray five times a day. You have to, for those believing, practicing Muslims. The third, so these first two actions are personally, it forms and shapes your vertical relationship with divine, but that vertical relationship is not enough. It has to be horizontal as well. Your relationship with the rest of the creation, your relationship with other human beings, your actions and interactions and conduct with them is extremely important as well. There is no unconditional grace in Islam. God can but will not forgive you, if there's a third party involved. If I hurt and harm David, I cannot go and ask forgiveness to God almighty. God will ask David whether or not I should be forgiven. And the second and third, the first and second category basically establishes that Five Daily Prayers, declaring God's oneness and glorifying God's name in your life is your vertical relationship with God. But the third, fourth and fifth pillar, is all about the horizontal one. The third one is you have to fast in the month of Ramadan, from sunrise to sunset and it's coming now in the summer, it will be like 18 hours of fasting. It will be a challenging one, but it never has challenges you will fast, you will deprive yourself from food and drinking and certain other things. You take these external spiritual disciplines to tame your soul, to discipline yourself, to control yourself and try to stop your waste and try to control your lower desires, carnal desires. But also more importantly you will develop empathy, you will develop empathy to those who starve. Today 1 billion people, 1 billion children of God, starve and face difficulty finding drinking water. So, for Islam you can really not empathize, you cannot really, by intellectual ways, it's not a head game. You have to put yourself in a situation, what does it mean to starve? So that will create the kind of mercy and compassion in you that you will be much more charitable person. The fourth pillar of Islam is, Zakat. You have to pay, have to, must, this is not charity, it's an obligatory religious tax that you have to pay 2.5 percent of your wealth, not your income. You basically say, I put together all my wealth, I have a car, I have a home, my wife have jewelry, I have money on my savings accounts and I have debt. You deduct the debt, the remaining amount, 2.5 percent have to go, must go. Everything you pay in addition, the 2.5 percent is the charity. But this is not charity, you must. God says in the Quran "I give portion of the poor's wealth into the wealth of the rich." So it is your ethical, moral responsible to take their share. You are not doing anybody a favor, you are basically giving their right to them. And the fifth one is, once in your lifetime, if you're healthy enough, if you are rich enough and if the travel conditions are okay, you have to go to Mecca, you have to go to Hajj, you have to go to pilgrimage, which is very important. Like why making this as the five pillar? It's really interesting. 4300 years ago Islam came, when Islam came, those moral, ethical ideals existed like generosity, kindness and compassion, et cetera. It all existed, but it was tribal. All you had to be generous for was your own people, your own tribes, your compassion, your loving to your own people. But Islam, in a very creative way, forced people to rearrange the furniture in their minds and to transcend from those tribal identity and bring out those ideals of goodness, kindness, generosity and love to humanity. So when you go to Hajj, you wrap yourself with a two pieces of cloth and you rub elbows and shoulders with Chinese Muslims, Afghani Muslims, African-American Muslims, white Caucasian Muslims, German Muslims, Argentinian Muslims, you realize that, you are more than just being your ethnic identity, your racial identity, your citizenship. It's an invitation to unite and connect with your ultimate identity, which is human being, even before becoming Muslim. Have you experienced that? I have. How many times? Six times. I have done the major Hajj, the pilgrimage once and the minor Hajj. If you have to go in certain times to make it a real Hajj. If you visit the same sites on other times it's considered as minor Hajj, Umrah. So, but the major Hajj I did it with my wife and my mother, two women that I love, two women that I admire in my life. It was a mountaintop experience. Quite honestly, I had very little expectations in terms of its spiritual transformational power because I said, like rubbing elbows with five million people, like how are you going to find that peaceful moment? But I always underestimate God's ability to find me in that crowd. And I came back two months, I was spiritual drunk, I was dancing in the closet. It's a really life changing experience. Thank you for sharing that with us. Pleasure.
