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This is speaking of faith, conversation about belief, meaning, ethics, and ideas.

I'm Krista Tippett.

Today, the Spirit of Islam.

We'll explore the religious thought and the spiritual vitality of two Muslims

male and female. They are both American and they both have roots in ancient Islamic

cultural, intellectual, and mystical traditions. Their stories and ideas, music, and readings,

a vocal sense of the richness of global Islamic spirituality, and some of its hidden nuances and

beauty. Islamic spirituality remains mysterious and inaccessible to many Americans, in part,

perhaps because the Quran is most often learned and recited in Arabic, the mother tongue of the

seventh century prophet Muhammad. Later in this hour, see me Bushra Ghazi will take us inside

the way ordinary Muslims hear the Quran and take it to heart through ritual recitation.

There's a Muslim scholar who's translated Quran at one point in speaking to people as divine

song, divine song, perhaps expresses more of what we experience in Quran, and also the way in which

the recitation of Quran is just interwoven in today's life.

My first guest, Omid Safi, is a professor of religion at Colgate University and a scholar of

sufism, the mystical tradition of Islam. Sufi tradition is best known in the United States through

the translated poetry of the 13th century Persian mystic Rumi. Omid Safi himself comes from a long

line of Persian Islamic poets. He was born in the United States to Iranian parents, but he spent 15

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