Feisal Abdul Rauf

Feisal Abdul Rauf , فيصل عبد الرؤوف

Feisal Abdul Rauf (Arabic: فيصل عبد الرؤوف‎, born 1948) is an Egyptian-American Sufi imam, author, and activist whose stated goal is to improve relations between the Muslim world and the West.Since 1983, he has been Imam of Masjid al-Farah, a mosque in New York City.

Born	1948 Kuwait
Occupation	Imam
Known for	Sponsor of Park51

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. He has condemned the 9/11 attacks as un-Islamic and called on the U.S. government to reduce the threat of terrorism by altering its Middle Eastern foreign policy.Author Karen Armstrong, among others, has praised him for his attempts to build bridges between the West and the Muslim world.

In 2010, Rauf received national attention for his plans to build Park51, an Islamic community center, two blocks (600 feet or 180 meters) away from Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan.

Early life

Rauf was born in Kuwait. His father, Egyptian Imam and Sunni scholar Muhammad Abdul Rauf (1917–2004), moved with the younger Rauf to New York City in the 1960s. The elder Rauf assisted with efforts to create the multimillion dollar Islamic Cultural Center of New York, the first building designed as a mosque in New York City, which took 25 years to complete and opened in 1991.

Rauf earned bachelor's degree in physics from Columbia University in the late 1960s, before earning a master's degree in plasma physics at Stevens University in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Career

After his studies, Rauf focused on his religious aspirations, and became a popular leader of a New York City mosque.He also held jobs in teaching, as a salesman and in real estate.

Rauf has written three books on Islam and its place in contemporary Western society, including What's Right with Islam, which was later printed in paperback with the changed title What's Right with Islam is What's Right with America. Rauf has been imam of Masjid al-Farah at 245 West Broadway in New York City's Tribeca district since 1983.

Rauf worked to build bridges between American society, the American Muslim community and the wider Muslim world. In 1997, he founded the American Society for Muslim Advancement (originally named the American Sufi Muslim Association), a civil society organization aimed at promoting positive engagement between American society and American Muslims. The organization is now headed by his wife. He is a member of the World Economic Forum Council of 100 Leaders (Islamic-West dialogue) and has received both the Alliance for International Conflict Prevention and Resolution’s annual Alliance Peacebuilder Award and The Interfaith Center of New York’s annual James Parks Morton Interfaith Award (2006) He was a major speaker at the 2009 Parliament of the World's Religions in Melbourne, Australia.

In 2003, Rauf founded the Cordoba Initiative, another registered nonprofit organization with offices in both New York and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. As CEO of Cordoba Initiative, Rauf coordinates projects that emphasize the bonds that connect the Muslim world and the West.

Cordoba House and Park51

Main article: Park51

In 2009, Rauf announced plans for Cordoba House to be established two blocks from Ground Zero. According to the September 8, 2010 statement by Park51:

“Park51 is the name of the planned Muslim community center being built in lower Manhattan. Park51 is also the name of the 501(c)(3) nonprofit entity that has already been established, which will fund and oversee this initiative. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf will be the spiritual leader of the Cordoba House which will be the interfaith and religious component of the center and will reside within Park51.”

About Park51: Park51 is a nonsectarian community, cultural and interfaith spiritual center along with a Muslim prayer area and a monument to honor all those we lost on 9/11.

Plans for the project include a mosque which would accommodate 1,000–2,000 Muslims in prayer. Rauf won support from the local Community Board, and received both support and opposition from some 9/11 families, politicians, organizations, academics, and others. The initiative was supported by some Muslim American leaders and organizations, including CAIR, and criticized by some other Muslims such as Sufi mystic Stephen Suleyman Schwartz, director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism in Washington.Supporters of the project point out that two mosques already have firm roots in Lower Manhattan and that one of them was founded in 1970, pre-dating the World Trade Center.

Controversy over the location ensued, and in an interview September 8, 2010 Rauf was asked "...given what you know now, would you have said, listen, let's not do it there? Because it sounds like you're saying in retrospect wouldn't have done it." Rauf answered:

If I knew this would happen, this would cause this kind of pain, I wouldn't have done it. My life has been devoted to peacemaking.

Support

British author Karen Armstrong said in the introduction to Rauf's book:

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf ... is a bridge figure because he has deep roots in both worlds. He was educated in Egypt, England, Malaysia and the United States, and his mosque in New York City is only a few blocks away from the World Trade Center. After September 11, people often asked me, "Where are the moderate Muslims? why are they not speaking out?" In Imam Rauf, we have a Muslim who can speak to Western people in a way they can understand."

Fareed Zakaria praised Rauf for speaking of "the need for Muslims to live peacefully with all other religions", for emphasizing the commonalities among all faiths, for advocating equal rights for women and opposing laws that in any way punish non-Muslims.

Walter Isaacson, head of The Aspen Institute, says Rauf "has participated at the Aspen Institute in Muslim-Christian-Jewish working groups looking at ways to promote greater religious tolerance. He has consistently denounced radical Islam and terrorism, and promoted a moderate and tolerant Islam."

Controversies

After 9/11

Following the September 11 attacks, Rauf conducted training and speeches for the F.B.I. and U.S. State Department.

However, some U.S. politicians have voiced concerns about his views, referring to comments Rauf made when interviewed by Ed Bradley on CBS 60 Minutes on September 30, 2001. Rauf's website says he was referring to the US CIA in the 1980s "financing Osama Bin Laden and strengthening the Taliban." Columnist Jonathan Rauch wrote that Rauf gave a "mixed, muddled, muttered" message after 9/11. Nineteen days after the attacks, he told CBS's 60 Minutes that fanaticism and terrorism have no place in Islam. Rauch said that the message was mixed, however, because when then asked if the U.S. deserved the attacks, Rauf answered, "I wouldn't say that the United States deserved what happened. But the United States' policies were an accessory to the crime that happened." When the interviewer asked Rauf how he considered the U.S. to be an accessory, he replied, "because we have been accessory to a lot of innocent lives dying in the world. In fact, in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the USA."[6][29][30] Although this CIA-Osama bin Laden controversy has been brought up by many others, Rudy Giuliani, Peter T. King, Rick Lazio, and Sarah Palin expressed concern about these remarks when discussing Rauf as the driving force behind the Park51 project. As Khan explained on August 15, 2010 on This Week with Christiane Amanpour:

KHAN: It was a longer interview, and in the longer interview, he talked about the CIA support specifically to Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. And...

AMANPOUR: You mean that...

KHAN: Yes, in the '80s.

AMANPOUR: ... against the Soviet Union.

KHAN: The Soviet Union. And how this was, you know, in CIA terms, a blowback of that. That's what he meant.

At National Review, Dan Foster wrote:

When you say that the United States was "an accessory to the crime" of 9/11, as he did, it tends to blunt my ability to pick up the subtleties of what comes after. That interview was equivocal at every turn, and when moral equivalences are trotted out re: 9/11, the tie goes to "you're either with us, or with the terrorists." In other words, we are perfectly entitled to suspect that the "accessories to the crime" bit represents the investment, while the "condemning terrorism" bit is merely the hedge.

The editors of the magazine wrote "While he cannot quite bring himself to blame the terrorists for being terrorists, he finds it easy to blame the United States for being a victim of terrorism."In 2004, he said the U.S. and the West must acknowledge the harm they have done to Muslims before terrorism can end. Speaking at his New York mosque, Rauf said:

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.

He also said that there could be little progress in Western-Islamic relations until the U.S. acknowledged backing Middle East dictators, and the U.S. President gave an "American Culpa" speech to the Muslim world, because there are "an endless supply of angry young Muslim rebels prepared to die for their cause and there [is] no sign of the attacks ending unless there [is] a fundamental change in the world".

Hamas

During an interview on New York WABC radio in June 2010, Rauf declined to say whether he agreed with the U.S. State Department's designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization. Responding to the question, Rauf said, "Look, I'm not a politician. The issue of terrorism is a very complex question... I am a peace builder. I will not allow anybody to put me in a position where I am seen by any party in the world as an adversary or as an enemy."Sarah Palin and Lazio criticized his refusal to agree with the assessment of the United States that Hamas is a terrorist organization, and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani alleged that Rauf had supported radical causes that sympathized with Islamic terrorism.

New York's Mayor Bloomberg was asked to comment on whether Rauf is a man of peace, given his background "where he's supposedly supported Hamas, [and] blamed the U.S. for 9/11 attacks".Bloomberg responded:

My job is not to vet clergy in this city.... Everybody has a right to their opinions. You don't have to worship there.... this country is not built around ... only those ... clergy people that we agree with. It's built around freedom. That's the wonderful thing about the First Amendment—you can say anything you want.

However, when interviewed on CNN September 8, 2010, Imam had this to say about Hamas:

I condemn everyone and anyone who commits acts of terrorism, and Hamas has committed acts of terrorism.

Rental properties

Rauf owns several apartment buildings in Hudson County, New Jersey, where he lives, including four in Union City, and the one in North Bergen in which he lives. By 2010, numerous residents of Rauf's properties in Union City had alleged that those properties have fallen into disrepair over the course of the prior several years, with some of the residents attributing this to Rauf's role as an imam in Lower Manhattan. One 23-year resident of the building at 2206 Central Avenue described that property as "horrible" and a "mess", pointing to a two-week period during the winter of 2009 in which the residents went without hot water after the boiler broke. Residents have also cited rat and bed bug infestations, and have complained that such issues can take up to six months to be resolved. Union City spokesperson Mark Albiez confirmed that multiple health violations have been leveled against Rauf's properties. These allegations have added to the controversy over Park51.

According to 2010 reports by the Bergen Record, Rauf met with U.S. Senator Robert Menendez around 1991 when Menendez was Mayor of Union City, to request state funds to renovate three of his properties. As a result, Rauf received $80,000 in city funds, $384,000 from the Union City Community Development Agency, $1.3 million in construction loans from Hudson County's Affordable Housing Trust Fund, and $630,900 from the state. Rauf was also sued for fraud in 2008 by his one-time business partner, James Cockinos, over a $250,000 mortgage that Cockinos gave Rauf for his Central Avenue property, ownership of which Rauf then transferred to Sage Developments for a second $650,000 mortgage. Rauf and his wife, Daisy Khan, made payments to Cockinos for 11 years, but ceased after a fire damaged the property. The two parties settled out of court. The Record also reported that records beginning thirty years previous indicated that Rauf owned an apartment in North Bergen and in Palisades Park. Though records indicate Rauf owns a home on 78th Street in North Bergen, a neighbor indicated that Khan is there more often than the frequently traveling Rauf, and it is unclear if he still owns the Palisades Park property.

Personal life

Rauf's first wife was an American woman who converted to Islam. Rauf later married a Malaysian woman. Rauf has two children with each of his first two wives. He has been married to Daisy Khan since the late 1990s.[8] Khan, a native of Kashmir, India is a professional interior architect, but since 2005 has worked full-time for the two non-profit organizations founded by Rauf, and at times functions as his spokesperson.

Rauf and Khan live in North Bergen, New Jersey.

Selected bibliography

Books

Feisal Abdul Rauf, What's Right with Islam: a New Vision for Muslims and the West (HarperCollins, 2004) ISBN 978-0060582722, reissued as What's Right with Islam Is What's Right with America (HarperCollins, 2005) ISBN 9780060750626. (An Indonesian language edition was published in 2007, titled Seruan Azan Dari Puing WTC: Dakwah Islam di Jantung Amerika Pasca 9/11, which translates as A Call to Prayer from the WTC Rubble: Islamic Dawah from the Heart of America Post 911)

Feisal Abdul Rauf, Islam: A Sacred Law (Threshold Books, 2000) ISBN 978-0939660704

Feisal Abdul Rauf, Islam: A Search for Meaning (Mazda Publishers, 1996) ISBN 978-1568590370

Feisal Abdul Rauf and and Laleh Bakhtiar, Quran for Children (Kazi Publications, 1985) ISBN 978-0935782080

Other publications

"Building on Faith", The New York Times. September 7, 2010.

"Preventing Chaos", The Star (Malaysia). March 9, 2008.

"Asceticism in Islam", Cross Currents. Winter, 2008, (vol. 57 No. 4) ed. by Pederson, Kusumita.

"The Ideals We Share", Newsweek. July 31, 2007. with Khan, Daisy.

"The End of Barbarism: The Phenomenon of Torture and the Search for Common Good", Pursuing the Global Common Good: Principle and Practice in US Foreign Policy. Washington, DC: Center for American Progress. 2007. with Schulz, William F., ed. by Steenland, Sally, et al. video

"What is Sunni Islam?" in Voices of Islam: Voices of Tradition, vol. 1 of 3, ed. Cornell, Vincent J. Westport: Praeger. 2007.

"Al-Qaeda's Greatest Fear may be US Leaving Iraq". Aspen Times. October 11, 2006. with Bennett, John.

"Arab Reform Final Report". New York: Council on Foreign Relations. 2005. with Albright, Madeleine, et al.

"Bringing Muslim Nations into the Global Century", Fortune. October 18, 2004.

(source:wikipedia)