Make no mistake about it - Islam is just not another way to approach God.
And I do - make no mistake, I am a Christian and I believe in God, and I don't believe he makes mistakes. So I don't believe that being gay is not a sin, and in fact it's how you're made.
So many people would like to have guidance from God because obviously, if you have a word from God, it's the best possible thing. But they don't relate that to life as a whole. Often they want guidance as a way of opting out of the responsibility of making decisions.
The man who buried Malcolm X - my Muslim imam, priest - he, after I got beat up by police... came to me, and he said, 'You don't need this American name.' And I was susceptible to it at the time because, God knows, I had just gotten whipped near to death. So he gave me an Arab name; he gave me the name Amir Barakat.
Why have I been chosen to deliver the message of female intelligence and its divinity to a deaf world of males? I have asked my god that question and She answered, 'Hey, why not you Roseanne?' Indeed, why not each of us?
Sometimes I'm having conversations with my friends, and I feel like they can't relate to me anymore. I'm like, 'Oh, my God, let me tell you about my experience on 'Fallon'!' And they'll be like, 'Oh, my God, let me tell you about my trip to the mall!' It sometimes feels lonely.
I'm a hybrid, from a cultural perspective, but I don't think in these terms. I'm more simple than that. I'm a mammal who will live 70 years, more or less, who believes in God and likes his life.
The Constitution is man-made, so it is not perfect. It's not the basis of my beliefs. My belief system is based on the Scriptures which come from God.
It was really intense for me to start having conversations with God, when according to the man-made laws in my religion - to be homosexual is evil.
One needs to live every day according to God's commandments. And then any kind of difficulty or unpleasantness will be manageable.
Science is telling us that the reason people die is not because some god said so or because the laws of nature mandate it. People always die because of technical problems. And every technical problem has, in principle, a technical solution.
I hope we never get to the point that we put ourselves in Jesus' place. But when I read the New Testament basically, we get three mandates: to love God, to love each other, and to take care of the least among us. And I think this is at least a step in the right direction.
Peter was sick of being a pop star, the guitar god, and so he decided to teach himself other instruments. Among the instruments that he picked up was the mandolin.
You seek the heights of manhood when you seek the depths of God.
But for my faith in God, I should have been a raving maniac.
The Christian leaders of the future have to be theologians, persons who know the heart of God and are trained - through prayer, study, and careful analysis - to manifest the divine event of God's saving work in the midst of the many seemingly random events of their time.
God is everywhere but He is most manifest in man. So serve man as God. That is as good as worshipping God.
My mom used to tell me when I was little, 'When it rains, it's God's manifestation - a big day's waiting to happen.'
The hatred and contempt for men, women and children that was manifested in the Shoah was a crime against God and against humanity.
If you love God, you can't hate anything or anyone. If the love one offers is met with hate, it doesn't die, rather it manifests in the form of compassion. That is universal love. It is not just a sentiment. It cannot be manifested merely by a shift in mental disposition. It can only come from inner cleaning, an inner awakening.
