Ramadan is, as a matter of fact, all about breaking habits. This is the real and inner meaning of fasting, because by breaking habits we deprive ourselves of certain indulgences, apart from the satisfaction of our physical needs, which have virtually become part of our nature.

The trunk called the human virtue produces two main branches that all other virtues and branches flow from or start from. And the two branches are generosity and courage. All human virtue is in these two broad classes. There isn’t a third. There are only these two.

When we look at our young children, you can see when they look at a plant they're overwhelmed. When they look at an animal they are completely aghast. We were all like that at 8 months or 6 months. What happened to that fascinated light magical being?

There is a naiveté that we suffer from when we think it’s up to others to give us the Divine Encounter. Understand that the only thing that helps the Divine Encounter is your own effort, and tt’s guaranteed you’re going to die. You’ll get back to Him. What’s the fuss?

We are frail as human beings. We are designed by His Genius to be inadequate. It cannot be otherwise, because there is no other way of describing the condition of that which is very small in the face of that which is overwhelming other than frail, or inadequate and about to be overwhelmed.

It is particularly nights where you see people that you haven’t seen for a long time, where you realise that you share something really deep with many people – something that you develop over decades. These experiences are a metaphor for human existence.

Many people are in a fix about how to deal with the very complex issue of giving to beggars of all ages and genders that are literally flooding the streets of Karachi - or any other present-day rural mendicant scene anywhere.

Why do Muslims have an issue with pleasure? Why is it that being Muslim is so punitive that you can't do things which other people enjoy doing, and which you enjoy doing, that you get pleasure out of? Why is it what we are so restricted and accept and take on this restriction?

In Surah Alam Nasrah, Allah subhana wa taala reassures us that in difficulty there's ease. We often think of this as subsequently to difficulty there's ease. But there's at least one way of reading this that suggests that the difficulty itself is the ease.

Our base condition, our root condition, our normative condition, is ecstasy. That’s what we've been designed to experience. An ecstasy of such a profound character and nature, that to experience it even for a moment, is to fulfill a life. It is to have achieved the purpose of a life.