Religion and Faith

“Religion, it must be understood, is not faith.  Religion is the story of faith.  It is an institutionalized system of symbols and metaphors (read rituals and myths) that provides a common language with a community of faith can share with each other their numinous encounter with the Divine Presence.  Religion is concerned not with genuine history, but with sacred history, which does not course through time like a river.  Rather, sacred history is like a hallowed tree whose roots dig deep into primordial time and whose branches weave in and out of genuine history with little concern for the boundaries of space and time.  Indeed, it is precisely at those moments when sacred and genuine history collide that religions are born.  The clash of monotheisms occur when faith, which is mysterious and ineffable and which eschews all catagorizations, becomes entangled in the gnarled branches of religion.”

---Azlan, Reza No god but God: the Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, p. xxv (prologue)(Random House Trade Paperback, 2005).