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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

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Feisal Abdul Rauf
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: October 23
Imam
🇰🇼
Peacemaker
Agent
Agents
Government
May
Even
Believe

More quotes by Feisal Abdul Rauf

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The sources of human problems have to do with egotism, ‘I.’
Feisal Abdul Rauf
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When I arrived in America, I experienced serious culture shock. For someone with a religious upbringing, the 1960s were an extremely difficult time. Even though religion was a big part of the civil rights and peace movements, in my college religion was treated as irrelevant, hopelessly stodgy, and behind the times.
Feisal Abdul Rauf
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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
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What's brilliant about the United States system of government is separation of power. Not only the executive, legislative, judicial branches, but also the independence of the military from civilians, an independent media and press, an independent central bank.
Feisal Abdul Rauf
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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
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Yusuf Qaradawi is probably the most well-known legal authority in the whole Muslim world today.
Feisal Abdul Rauf
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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
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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.
Feisal Abdul Rauf
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'Jihad' can mean holy war to extremists, but it means struggle to the average Muslim.
Feisal Abdul Rauf
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I worked as a teacher in the public school system in New York City for several years, and I was a victim of the layoffs, you know, in the mid-'70s. And then I worked as a sales engineer for a company in New Jersey that was selling industrial filtration equipment.
Feisal Abdul Rauf
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My life has been devoted to peacemaking.
Feisal Abdul Rauf
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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
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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
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I am an American citizen born in Kuwait of Egyptian parents. I grew up in Great Britain, Malaysia, and Egypt and have lived in the United States since 1965, when I was seventeen.
Feisal Abdul Rauf
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In spite of the polls, the fact is that American Muslims are very happy and they thrive in this country.
Feisal Abdul Rauf
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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
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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.
Feisal Abdul Rauf
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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
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I condemn everyone and anyone who commits acts of terrorism. And Hamas has committed acts of terrorism.
Feisal Abdul Rauf
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Islamic law is clearly against terrorism, against any kind of deliberate killing of civilians or similar 'collateral damage.'
Feisal Abdul Rauf