Feisal Abdul Rauf Quotes
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.
Rauf, Feisal Abdul. Islam: A Sacred Law: What Every Muslim Should Know About Shariah. Threshold Books, 2000.
It is often said that Judaism, Christianity and Islam share the origin in Abraham. However, orthodox Muslims use this passage of the Koran to arguer that Abraham had nothing to do with Judaism or Christianity. The time line of Abraham—according to biblical time c. 4000 BC argues more for his Judaic origins, but Western religion has his sons splitting into the great faiths. Muhammed uttered these lines roughly 600 years after the birth of Christ.
This is actually a very widespread belief amongst many Muslims. Even sophisticated national leaders do not appreciate that other religions have adherents who feel just as passionately about their own religion. See {588668} for another example where Muslim leaders believe that if Jewish Kings David and Solomon came back to life they would worship Islam.
The publication in the middle of a potential war crisis created a crisis of its own that dominated the attention of the government. The author, advocating modernization of Syria was jailed for life. People rioted in the streets.
Oman was one of the first kingdoms to embrace Islam, albeit under the coercion described in this quotation.
At the time, it was very difficult for people who had been taught all their lives that God was directly responsible for the creation to accept the notion of evolution. At the time, there was not the overwhelming evidence proving Darwin’s theory that we have today. Nor did theologians realize that evolution and Darwinism were not inconsistent with the concept of a creator and supreme being. Nonetheless, there are still those who, like Agassiz, reject evolution and insist that the Biblical version of creation is literally true. See {586990}. Then there are people who have come up with the concept of Intelligent Design which originated with Agassiz though he never called it that. Most religious people today, in contrast, see no conflict in natural selection as described by Darwin and later proven, and the concept of God. They see the Biblical creation as metaphorical and natural selection as the product of an omniscient supreme being.
Judge Moore was trying to justify oaths to God or other state references to a Judeo-Christian God as not violating the 1st Amendment stricture about the government endorsing a particular religion. Note however his {33827} quotation.
Feisal Abdul Rauf (Arabic: فيصل عبد الرؤوف, born 1948) is an American Sufi imam, author, and activist whose stated goal is to improve relations between the Muslim world and the West. From 1983 to 2009, he served as Imam of Masjid al-Farah, a mosque in New York City. He has written three books on Islam and its place in contemporary Western society, including What's Right with Islam Is What's Right with America, and founded two non-profit organizations whose stated missions are to enhance the discourse on Islam in society.
