Feisal Abdul Rauf Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
-
“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 -
“I am a supporter of the state of Israel.”
-- Feisal Abdul Rauf -
“I'm not an agent from any government, even if some of you may not believe it. I'm not. I'm a peacemaker.”
-- Feisal Abdul Rauf -
“In spite of the polls, the fact is that American Muslims are very happy and they thrive in this country.”
-- Feisal Abdul Rauf -
“'Jihad' can mean holy war to extremists, but it means struggle to the average Muslim.”
-- Feisal Abdul Rauf -
“My life has been devoted to peacemaking.”
-- 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.”
-- 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.”
-- Feisal Abdul Rauf -
“We are not going to toy with our religion or any other. Nor are we going to barter. We are here to extend our hands to build peace and harmony.”
-- Feisal Abdul Rauf -
“We tend to forget in the West that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than Al Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims.”
-- Feisal Abdul Rauf -
“Bigotry toward any faith community cannot have any place in civilized society anywhere in the world.”
-- Feisal Abdul Rauf -
“Any organization or any individual that targets civilians and kills them for political agenda is a terrorist organization.”
-- 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.”
-- Feisal Abdul Rauf -
“Koran says whoever believes in God in the last day shall be saved. It is a religion whose very name, Islam, comes from the word Shalom, which means peace. It's about establishing peace. We greet each other with peace be upon you, which the Jews do in greeting each other.”
-- Feisal Abdul Rauf -
“I condemn everyone and anyone who commits acts of terrorism. And Hamas has committed acts of terrorism.”
-- 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.”
-- Feisal Abdul Rauf -
“Fanaticism and terrorism have no place in Islam.”
-- Feisal Abdul Rauf -
“Islamic law is clearly against terrorism, against any kind of deliberate killing of civilians or similar 'collateral damage.'”
-- 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.”
-- 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.”
-- 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 -
“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.”
-- 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 innocent civilians in Dresden and dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, neither of which were military targets.”
-- 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 -
“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.”
-- 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.”
-- 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.”
-- Feisal Abdul Rauf -
“The thing about the Islamic situation is we don't have a church. We don't have an ordained priesthood, which makes it a little complicated. But we do have a tradition of scholarship, and rules of scholarship. It's very much like any field of knowledge.”
-- Feisal Abdul Rauf -
“The ultimate vision is to instate in the Muslim world the notion of multiculturalism, which is part of our heritage and history, part of the fundamental, mainstream ideals of Islam.”
-- Feisal Abdul Rauf
