Dr. Abdallah talks about the importance of psycho-spiritual introspection in one’s orientation to the practice of Islam and how religious obligations should be transformational rather than simply transactional. If we look to avoid difficulty or hardship and attempt to overlook our inner state, we can fall into ‘spiritual bypassing’, where we use belief and ritual as a replacement for doing the inner reflection and hard work of healing our hearts. Islam requires us to do both, and if we orient ourselves to the practice of the religion in this way, the obligatory acts of worship and remembrance can and should become transformational.