CategoryHarmony Through Translation

When I first read Sufis of Andalusia as a teenager, I knew that I had met a visionary far beyond the limits of anyone I had read or heard about.  Ibn al-ʿArabī, I know now, was in the ocean without shore, but he was there as someone who, like the prophets and messengers and friends (awliyāʾ), stayed near the shore: the ones who go deep and drown, he says, benefit neither themselves or others...

Religion is supposed to provide guidance for human beings so they can better honor and glorify God and live peacefully with others, especially with those who share the belief in the same Creator.  But the percentage of those among the followers of the three Abrahamic religions who seem to resent or flat out hate each other is much higher than those who understand religion to be a tool for deeper...