Feisal Abdul Rauf

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.

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.

In the Muslim world, there are many people who have been vocal and we have been very vocal against extremists. But how to win this battle is an ongoing battle. And we must continue to wage the battle for peace.

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.

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.

We are Americans. We - we - we are - we are doctors. We are investment bankers. We are taxi drivers. We are store keepers. We are lawyers. We are - we are part of the fabric of America. And the way that America today treats its Muslims is being watched by over a billion Muslims worldwide.

We've got to be fair. You can't say a place that has strip joints is sacred ground. We've got to be just. We've got to speak the truth. We've got to have justice for everybody. We're a country of justice for all, not justice for non-Muslims only or some groups and not for others.

In spite of the polls, the fact is that American Muslims are very happy and they thrive in this country.

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.

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

In Malaysia, where Western culture was extremely influential, I'd grown up listening to Elvis and the Beatles and watching American movies. People wanted to be like Americans. In contrast, when I got here, I saw prosperous middle-class American college students wanting to somehow join the Third World.

You take the best of our tradition as a start, and I'll take the best of Christianity ... From there we can build.

My life has been devoted to peacemaking.

The thing about the Islamic situation is we don't have a church. We don't have an ordained priesthood, which makes it a little complicated. But we do have a tradition of scholarship, and rules of scholarship. It's very much like any field of knowledge.

I've spoken with friends who are rabbis and priests and we've agreed that most people have an emotional attachment to their faith, a desire to fulfill their spiritual longings, but they are not experts in understanding the history of their religion.

I worked as a teacher in the public school system in New York City for several years, and I was a victim of the layoffs, you know, in the mid-'70s. And then I worked as a sales engineer for a company in New Jersey that was selling industrial filtration equipment.

I have never made a threat. I've never made a threat, never expressed a threat, never - I've never - I would never threaten violence ever, because I am a man of peace, dedicated to peace.

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

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.

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.

A kind of racism still exists in the United States, and Islamophobia is a more convenient way to express that sentiment. There has also been an attempt to paint Muslims as enemies of the United States.

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

One of the misperceptions that exists in the Muslim world, which needs to be fixed, is the perception that Muslims in America are - are - are living in - in very, very, very bad circumstances. They cannot practice religion freely. It is not the truth at all. The fact is, we are practicing. We fast, we pray, we do our prayers.

The Islamic method of waging war is not to kill innocent civilians, but it was Christians in World War II who bombed innocent civilians in Dresden and dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, neither of which were military targets.

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

There are always people who will - who will do peculiar things and think that they are doing things in the name of their religion.

Fanaticism and terrorism have no place in Islam.