Feisal Abdul Rauf quotes

The truth is that killing innocent people is always wrong - and no argument or excuse, no matter how deeply believed, can ever make it right. No religion on earth condones the killing of innocent people; no faith tradition tolerates the random killing of our brothers and sisters on this earth. (Feisal Abdul Rauf)
Our enemy is not Islam. Islam is not the enemy of America; Americans are not the enemy of Islam. Our real enemy is extremism and radicalism. View quote
Feisal Abdul Rauf
The fundamental idea which defines a human being as a Muslim is the declaration of faith: that there is a creator, whom we call God - or Allah, in Arabic - and that the creator is one and single. And we declare this faith by the declaration of faith, where we... bear witness that there is no God but God. View quote
Feisal Abdul Rauf
In the 20th century, the Muslim world created a vision of religious nationalism. Turkey, for example, had to be ethnically Turkish. Kurds, Armenians, other minorities didn't have a place in such a vision of a nation-state. View quote
Feisal Abdul Rauf
In Malaysia, where Western culture was extremely influential, I'd grown up listening to Elvis and the Beatles and watching American movies. People wanted to be like Americans. In contrast, when I got here, I saw prosperous middle-class American college students wanting to somehow join the Third World. View quote
Feisal Abdul Rauf
There are moderates in Israel. There are moderates in Iran, there are moderates in the Republican Party, moderates in the Democratic Party. What we need to do is we need link all of these moderates together and to figure out a way by which this particular coalition can speak to important issues to marginalize the voice of the extremists. View quote
Feisal Abdul Rauf
Bigotry toward any faith community cannot have any place in civilized society anywhere in the world. View quote
Feisal Abdul Rauf
Any organization or any individual that targets civilians and kills them for political agenda is a terrorist organization. View quote
Feisal Abdul Rauf
God says in the Quran that there is only one true religion, God's religion. It's the same theme that God revealed to all of the prophets, even before Muhammad. View quote
Feisal Abdul Rauf
'Jihad' can mean holy war to extremists, but it means struggle to the average Muslim. View quote
Feisal Abdul Rauf
Sufis teach that we first must battle and destroy the evil within ourselves by shining upon it the good within, and then we learn to battle the evil in others by helping their higher selves gain control of their lower selves. (Feisal Abdul Rauf)
Religion is defined by the relationship between God and man. And Islam is the submission and the acknowledgment of the human being to the creator. View quote
Feisal Abdul Rauf
There are individuals who are working very hard to promote fear and antagonism towards Islam and Muslims in this country. It's fueled, in part, by the first African-American president that we have. Obama's father was a Muslim and people have used this to arouse hostility against him. View quote
Feisal Abdul Rauf
One of the misperceptions that exists in the Muslim world, which needs to be fixed, is the perception that Muslims in America are - are - are living in - in very, very, very bad circumstances. They cannot practice religion freely. It is not the truth at all. The fact is, we are practicing. We fast, we pray, we do our prayers. View quote
Feisal Abdul Rauf
Americans must outgrow the unbecoming arrogance that leads us to assert that America somehow owns a monopoly on goodness and truth - a belief that leads some to view the world as but a stage on which to play out the great historical drama: the United States of America versus the Powers of Evil. View quote
Feisal Abdul Rauf
I as a Muslim want you, as a Christian, to really be a perfect Christian. I want my Jewish friends to be perfect Jews, to live according to the highest principles of what it means to be a Jew, to be a Christian, to be a Muslim. View quote
Feisal Abdul Rauf
My life has been devoted to peacemaking. View quote
Feisal Abdul Rauf
Islamic law is clearly against terrorism, against any kind of deliberate killing of civilians or similar 'collateral damage.' View quote
Feisal Abdul Rauf
Staying chaste until marriage, a commandment of my faith, was one of the most difficult challenges of my young life. I had a powerful sense that if I did not get a grip on my identity, my ethics, and my religion, I would go off the rails. View quote
Feisal Abdul Rauf
There are always people who will - who will do peculiar things and think that they are doing things in the name of their religion. View quote
Feisal Abdul Rauf
If Muslims curse the Christians, then the Christians will curse the Muslims. And people will curse Allah, and Allah will hold us responsible for that. (Feisal Abdul Rauf)
It is part of my responsibility as a bridge builder to speak the truth about what's great about America, what we've done right, and what our less glorious moments. And many people feel that the Iraq adventure, for example, has been one of our less glorious moments. View quote
Feisal Abdul Rauf
Yusuf Qaradawi is probably the most well-known legal authority in the whole Muslim world today. View quote
Feisal Abdul Rauf
The battleground has been moderates of all faith traditions in all the countries of the world against the radicals of all faith traditions in all parts of the world. View quote
Feisal Abdul Rauf
The Islamic method of waging war is not to kill innocent civilians, but it was Christians in World War II who bombed civilians in Dresden and Hiroshima, neither of which were military targets. View quote
Feisal Abdul Rauf

Feisal Abdul Rauf

Feisal Abdul Rauf - Image
Photo: Copyright World Economic Forum (www.weforum.org), CC BY-SA 2.0
Occupation: Egyptian Theologian
Born: October 23, 1948
Quotes count: 47