But I think the heart of faith itself is not prose, it’s poetry – songs and art, not statistics and laws. And if, when we talk about faith, we focus on the prose and ignore the poetry, then we miss the deeper possibilities, especially the possibility of cosmic connection. Which is to say, we miss the point.

For me, those poetic possibilities are best expressed in sacred music. As the great Muslim poet Rumi writes:

We were all part of Adam and heard those melodies in Paradise
Though water and clay have covered us with doubt
We still remember something of those sounds

In Rumi’s poetry, musical instruments often serve as a metaphor of the seeker longing for God. We are vehicles for the divine in the form of sound. “Listen to the reed, how it tells a tale …” is the opening line of Rumi’s masterwork, the Mathnawi.

I was reminded of that during A Mystical Journey.

My friend Salman Ahmed, the Pakistani-American sufi rock star, sang praises to Allah (God) over his acoustic guitar and the rhythms of the tabla.

Sain Zahoor, dressed in a glittering gold coat and playing a multicolored one string instrument called the Ek Tara, alternately whirled in circles and sang of the Prophet Muhammad as the bearer of light and hope, making the audience feel very much like they were part of the spiritual dreams that inspired his music in the first place.

For me, the most moving performance was by the Choir Hazreti Hamza, made up of a group of men who would gather at a mosque in Sarajevo and sing soft praises to God as the city was being shelled in the 1990s.

There are some Muslims who believe that music is against the tradition of Islam. I am no theologian, but I believe that my religion is about life – and nothing is more life-affirming than the idea of a group of men who come together while the bombs are falling, sit quietly in a circle, and open their mouths to offer prayer and gratitude to God in the form of song.

It reminds me of the story of Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam.

When he converted to Islam in the late 1970s, Cat Stevens (now Yusuf Islam) happened to fall in with a group of Muslims who told him that music was against his new faith. It wasn’t until the early 1990s that Yusuf came under a different influence and re-thought his position on music.

It was the time of the Balkans war, and Yusuf, like most Muslims and many other citizens of good faith around the world, watched as the Bosnians were murdered en masse by the Serbs on the continent of Europe, while the U.S., Britain, France and others barely lifted a finger. He found himself growing angrier and angrier, and feeling more and more helpless. One day, he got a phone call from a Bosnian Aid agency. “Do something for the children being killed here,” the person on the other end of the line told him, “Organize an international concert – use your talent.”

Yusuf was torn. He had been told by an earlier influence that music was un-Islamic, but here were a group of Muslims asking for his help in the form of his gift – music. A few weeks later, Yusuf was visited by the Bosnian Foreign Minister, Dr. Irfan Ljubijankic, a Muslim and a doctor who had heroically saved the lives of many Bosnians in the basement of his home using the crudest medical instruments.

Dr. Ljubijankic had been deeply inspired by Cat Stevens’ music as a young man, so much so that he started playing music himself. When they met, Dr. Ljubijankic put in a cassette with a song he had written, “I Have No Cannons that Roar”. Yusuf was deeply moved by the song. Dr. Ljubijankic placed the cassette in his hand and said, “Please use it if you can for helping the cause.”

Some time later, the doctor’s helicopter was shot down over Bihac and he died in the attack. Yusuf played the cassette the doctor had given him over and over. And he started listening to other music coming out of Bosnia, hymns and songs called nashids that were providing the Bosnians with an enormous amount of emotional support during the war. Listening to these songs, Yusuf had a sudden realization: “Here was a magnificently potent tool; we simply had to use it.”

Yusuf, wishing to remain true to his faith and also provide his gift of music to the Bosnians, started studying with other teachers and returned to the traditions of Islam to explore further the permissibility of music. He found that the Prophet allowed and even encouraged music when it served a positive end. He was surprised that the Muslims who had told him that music was against Islam had not pointed out this crucial distinction. One line in his essay Islam Sings articulates a central truism in the formation of every individual’s religious identity: “It’s interesting to note now how my formative years as a Muslim were shaped by those I came into contact with.”

Yusuf Islam has started to make music again.

It is a gift to humanity, an expression of his faith, and perhaps, something deeper.

As Rumi is believed to have said: “Many roads lead to God. I have chosen that of music and dance.”