If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran

by Carla Power

Because at the end of the day, every religion and creed calls for justice. Everybody knows you need to be nice to people. To give people justice and their rights, to do charity. You don’t need Islam for this! Doesn’t the United Nations have the same concerns? These ideas you can make from your own home!” Islam anchored these universal human values in the history of the Prophet Muhammad. “This morality is not abstract,” said Akram. “They are connected to the details of a history, the life of the Prophet Muhammad.” Loyalty to that history—to the Prophet’s sunna, or words and deeds—is what makes Muslims different from all the other humans striving to be good. Preserving the Prophet’s sunna in everything one did, from brushing one’s teeth to building a system of government, thus became a sacred act. “Islam has been revealed to the Prophet Muhammad, and he taught it to his Companions, and now it is a duty for us to transmit it to the next generation exactly as he transmitted it to them.”