Religion For Grown-Ups

When it comes to "religion," I take more interest these days in disciplining what I do than what I believe. With points of doctrine, I could run in circles forever, but it's so boring, and all the twisting and flipping with abstract theology only happens inside my head and stays there. I have become concerned not with how a faith conviction might inform my outer behavior but the opposite: the ways that mindfully eating like the Prophet ate, or sitting as he sat, could inform and transform my insides. Many people fail to get this, because religion is only about faith for them. I am sometimes asked how I reconcile various things to my "faith," and I have nothing to say. Faith is not always what brings me to the Prophet.

My love offers a more reliable technology than my faith. Whether faith goes or stays, I hold on to my love. I love the Prophet. Actualizing my love through adherence to his sunna, performing my love through imitation of him, has become my equipment for self-constitution. I wash as the Prophet washed; it makes me think about him and his character, which then colors my interactions with Allah's other created things, as I try to treat them with his manners. Doing little sunna things here and there slows me down in a good way, and also feels like it slows down the world around me...

~ Michael Muhammad Knight, Tripping With Allah, pp. 261-262.