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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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Feisal Abdul Rauf
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: October 23
Imam
🇰🇼
Average
Holy
Struggle
War
Means
Extremists
Mean
Jihad
Extremist
Muslim

More quotes by 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 sources of human problems have to do with egotism, ‘I.’
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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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
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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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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
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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
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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 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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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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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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Yusuf Qaradawi is probably the most well-known legal authority in the whole Muslim world today.
Feisal Abdul Rauf
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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
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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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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
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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
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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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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
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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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In spite of the polls, the fact is that American Muslims are very happy and they thrive in this country.
Feisal Abdul Rauf