Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf Talks About Love (with other NY Muslim Voices and links)

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf


here

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf Speaks of Compassion - found earlier on the Charter for Compassion dot org and featured as Special to CNN on September 12, 2010 12:08 p.m. EDT from September 12, 2009

You may also want to visit the earlier site for this video, read the Charter for Compassion and Sign On? SEE the website here

Other Muslim Voices seeking to Clarify Misconceptions here

A little background (the following includes material posted just today, September 12, 2010 at Wikipedia - which often, naturally needs to be corroborated for balance - yet can often provide good leads):

Iman 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. Iman Rauf has been imam of Masjid al-Farah at 245 West Broadway in New York City's Tribeca district since 1983.

He has 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 Peace-builder 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.

In 2009, The New York Times reported on the plans for an Islamic center to be established at 45 Park Place, two blocks from Ground Zero:

A presence so close to the World Trade Center, “where a piece of the wreckage fell,” said Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the cleric leading the project, “sends the opposite statement to what happened on 9/11.” “We want to push back against the extremists,” added Imam Feisal, 61..."The location is not designated a mosque, but rather an overflow prayer space for another mosque, Al Farah at 245 West Broadway in TriBeCa, where Imam Feisal is the spiritual leader."

It was considered to be akin to the Chautauqua Institution, the 92 Street YMCA or the Jewish Community Center:

Joy Levitt, executive director of the Jewish Community Center, said the group would be proud to be a model for Imam Feisal at ground zero. “For the J.C.C. to have partners in the Muslim community that share our vision of pluralism and tolerance would be great,” she said. Mr. El-Gamal agreed. “What happened that day,” he said, “was not Islam.”

Sharif El-Gamal, chairman and chief executive of Soho Properties, bought 45 Park Place in July, 2009. "It’s really to provide a place of peace, a place of services and solutions for the community which is always looking for interfaith dialogue."

Later, the interfaith community center was named Cordoba House, after Abdul Rauf's Cordoba Initiative, and the building was named Park51, after the building's address.

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 with Larry King on 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." Iman 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.

On September 12, 2010 on This Week with Christiane Amanpour, Abdul Rauf repeated that if complaints had been raised in December 2009 when the project was front page news in The New York Times, he would have moved it, but at that time there was broad support for it which didn't change until May. Now he's concerned that a move would be used by radicals internationally to claim that "Islam is under attack in the Western world".

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."

Here's the most unexpected article on the Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf I've found today as I really didn't expect such a holy man of peace to be a little on the "wealthy side" in tastes if we can trust this Forbes Magazine to be portraying him accurately? However, since he says his favorite activity is to pray, I expect - no I'm convinced that he's using whatever others may consider his wealth on behalf of peace and the poor. GO here
Photo above comes from this article

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