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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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Feisal Abdul Rauf
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: October 23
Imam
🇰🇼
Great
Parents
Kuwait
Grew
Egyptian
Parent
Seventeen
Since
Egypt
American
Citizen
United
Britain
Born
Lived
States
Citizens
Malaysia

More quotes by Feisal Abdul Rauf

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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
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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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My life has been devoted to peacemaking.
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
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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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Yusuf Qaradawi is probably the most well-known legal authority in the whole Muslim world today.
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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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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I condemn everyone and anyone who commits acts of terrorism. And Hamas has committed acts of terrorism.
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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The sources of human problems have to do with egotism, ‘I.’
Feisal Abdul Rauf
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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
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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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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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'Jihad' can mean holy war to extremists, but it means struggle to the average Muslim.
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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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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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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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 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