The world wants to like America. The guiding values that Thomas Jefferson articulated so eloquently - life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - resonate strongly around the world, transcending countless superficial and cultural differences, not because these are American values, but because they are universal values, embedded in the human heart.

Feisal Abdul Rauf

Categorized in : World America Want

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

brother truth people

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

real america enemy

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

names mean believe

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

evil-within shining self

My life has been devoted to peacemaking.

Feisal Abdul Rauf

peacemaking devoted has-beens

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

muhammad prophet quran

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

issues voice party

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

powerful identity challenges

The sources of human problems have to do with egotism, ‘I.’

Feisal Abdul Rauf

egotism source problem

Bigotry toward any faith community cannot have any place in civilized society anywhere in the world.

Feisal Abdul Rauf

civilized-society community world

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

independent media military

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

submission islam men

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

names people thinking

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

united-states hands blood

Islamic law is clearly against terrorism, against any kind of deliberate killing of civilians or similar 'collateral damage.'

Feisal Abdul Rauf

damage islamic law

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

harmony toys hands

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

responsible christian people

'Jihad' can mean holy war to extremists, but it means struggle to the average Muslim.

Feisal Abdul Rauf

struggle war mean

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

views play drama

Any organization or any individual that targets civilians and kills them for political agenda is a terrorist organization.

Feisal Abdul Rauf

target political organization