The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia—and How It Died

by Philip Jenkins

With this ancient tradition in mind, we recall that the most characteristic Sufi devotion involves the multiple recitation of the central proclamation “La ilaha illa'llah” (“There is no god but God”). In their dhikr, remembrance, Sufis recite these words, the shahada, thousands of times each day, exactly as Egyptian or Syrian monks recite the Prayer of the Heart.