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 Read Quote
Jihad’ can mean holy war to extremists, but it means struggle to the average Muslim. Feisal Abdul Rauf Read Quote
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 Read Quote
Bigotry toward any faith community cannot have any place in civilized society anywhere in the world. Feisal Abdul Rauf Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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. Feisal Abdul Rauf Read Quote
I was completely surrounded by religion from a young time. I was taught by my father. I engaged in discussions with him and many of these scholars who visited and came around the dining table, the lunch table, and attended many lectures with my dad. And so I learned the apprentice way. Feisal Abdul Rauf Read Quote
I read, read enormously on all different fields of Islamic thought, from philosophy to Islamic literature, poetry, exegeses, knowledge of the Hadith, the teachings of the prophet. That’s how I trained myself. And then I was appointed imam by a Sufi master from Istanbul, Turkey. Feisal Abdul Rauf Read Quote
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. Feisal Abdul Rauf Read Quote
