"Can we trace the footsteps of the beloved when the beloved has walked away?

Can we find the scent, the fragrance, the redolence of his trace? Can we seek the fragments of memory, the smiles, the laughs, and the kind gestures? Can we locate the beauty over fourteen hundred years too late? I agonize over these questions, struggle with the promises, and I refuse to despair.

I agonize over the questions, and so I run to the Conference - I run to the books. I run to the papers and the ink. I run to the transmissions and reports - to so and so reported from so and so. I pursue the evidence in the books, in the testimonials and quotes, and in the layers of words. I pursue it with the relish of reverence, with the fervor of zeal, and the rapture of love. What I want is not to find him, for the Prophet is dead, but to find the perfume of his soul, the radiance of his beautiful face, and the magnanimous bliss of his hands. Yes, I search the hadith, the sunan, and the masanid, I even search the imagination and dreams. Those who love him will understand, and the others will only be interested in the archeology of his footprints in the sand. But the perfume of the beloved travels in the soul - not in the burdened winds or the antiquities of the land.

-Khaled M. Abou El Fadl, "In the Footteps of the Beloved," Conference of the Books: The Search for Beauty in Islam, p. 249-250