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ent parts and faculties from earlier): the body and its five senses<br />

worship God through the movements of prayer, and are purified<br />

through ablution and fasting; the soul worships God through prayer,<br />

be<strong>com</strong>es detached from the world through the tithe, and from<br />

the ego and the body through fasting; the ego is purified through<br />

ablution and fasting; the conscience worships God through and in<br />

the ablution; the soul at peace worships God through pilgrimage;<br />

sentiment and feelings worship God through the tithe; the will, the<br />

intellect and the breast worship God through Islam and the double<br />

testimony of faith; the faculty of speech, the faculty of learning and<br />

of imitation, the imagination and the memory worship God through<br />

prayer and through the Qur’an; the heart worships God through<br />

Iman and through pilgrimage; and the spirit, the heart’s core, the<br />

inner heart—and hence also insight and intuition—worship God<br />

through Ihsan and through constant remembrance of God, albeit<br />

none of the above preclude each other. Moreover, human beings<br />

worship God through Iman in knowing (and hence, doing), and<br />

through Ihsan in being.<br />

This is the great secret of Islam, Iman and Ihsan, and the<br />

invisible thread that binds them all together: Islam, Iman and<br />

Ihsan consist inwardly, and perhaps essentially, of harnessing<br />

all that human beings are in their bodies, souls and spirits to<br />

worshipping and loving God as much as possible in a perfectly<br />

<strong>com</strong>plementary and internally-<strong>com</strong>pleting way. In a sense, this<br />

must be so, since human beings were created to worship God.<br />

God says:<br />

And warn, for warning profits believers. / I created the<br />

jinn and humankind only that they might worship Me.<br />

/ I do not desire from them any provision, nor do I desire that<br />

they should feed [Me]. / Lo! it is God Who is the Provider,<br />

the Lord of Strength, the Firm. (<strong>Al</strong>-Dhariyat, 51:55–58)<br />

Moreover, Islam requires all that human beings are because of<br />

the Oneness of God. The Absoluteness of the Object of worship<br />

requires the entirety of the subject that worships.<br />

46

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