Omar Suleiman

God and us, and that encourages a sincere devotion and commitment to Him alone.

And so He is certainly described supreme, and God speaks to us through the Qur'an, and we speak to Him through sincere supplication.

And His attributes are the furthest from us in terms of their perfection.

But He is ever close to us through our supplication, through our prayers, and through our connection to Him.

Well, I think that there are different layers of difficulty, right?

There is the personal difficulty, submitting yourself to God.

You know, Islam requires a complete submission to Him.

And one of the things that happens is that if we project some of our bad experiences with authority onto our relationship with God,

then we immediately perceive him in a certain way that might not allow us to gain a closeness to him because maybe we didn't have the best relationship with our parents growing up.

Maybe we didn't have the best relationship with authority figures in our lives.

And so this idea of an ultimate authority to whom you submit yourself can be very difficult.

You know, Malcolm X, who was one of the most prominent converts to Islam in American history,

talked about the difficulty of prostration for the very first time.

Putting your head on the ground, putting your face on the ground and praying to God is a very humbling thing.

Submitting all of your affairs to him is very humbling.

And ultimately you have to relinquish control.

And you can't relinquish control without trust.

So you have to learn to trust God.

To trust God, you have to know him.

And to know him is to love him.