Pickles, cheese, lettuce, onion and tomatoes.

Today is the end of the first week of Ramadan, and if there's one thing I learned so far, it's that Islam is a very uncluttered religious code.

Simply expressed there is one God, the God of Abraham, Isac and Jacob (same as Christianity and Judaism), Mohamed is/was His prophet and the the Muslim (believers) job is simply to worship Allah and live according to His word.

No complicated dogma, formula or theological premises, just 'Trust and Obey, as the old Christian Evangelical Hymn says.

And in it's simplicity there is beauty.

Like Christianity, Islam has made a major contribution to architecture, literature, art and astronomy and these are perhaps the world's best guarded secrets. The absolute breathtaking splendor of Khiva, Bukhara, Samarqand and Tashkent, which we were privileged to visit last year, are the equal of the ancient wonders of Egypt or the majesty of Rome, but unspoilt by commercial exploitation or physical decay. No ruins!

And all build & kept in perfect repair, simply to glorify God.

As I see it, our faiths are a bit like a hamburger, actually.

When you remove all the pickles, cheese, lettuce, onion and tomato, what's left is the bun and the pattie: and no matter what else you add, unless you have the bun and the pattie, you don't have a hamburger!

From where I stand today, the essence of our shared belief is God, and His word, the bun and the pattie of each of our faiths.

Anything else is just pickles, cheese, lettuce, onion and tomatoes.