Politics & Power Quote by Feisal Abdul Rauf

“In spite of the polls” is the tell: Rauf isn’t merely offering reassurance, he’s disputing a public narrative that claims Muslims are alienated, under siege, or fundamentally at odds with American life. The line moves like a rebuttal to data used as a political weapon. Polls can measure sentiment, but they can also be curated into a story; Rauf positions himself against that story with an appeal to lived reality.

The sentence does two kinds of work at once. First, it’s defensive in the strategic sense: “very happy” and “thrive” are deliberately upbeat, almost stubbornly so, meant to puncture the anxiety economy that surrounds Muslim belonging in the U.S. Second, it’s aspirational. He’s not just describing Muslims; he’s describing America as a place capable of absorbing difference without collapsing into paranoia. That’s theology meeting civics: a claim about what a pluralist nation is supposed to do.

The subtext is also a warning. If polls suggest mistrust or fear, Rauf implies the problem isn’t Muslim integration so much as the country’s willingness to see Muslims as ordinary. The line quietly shifts the burden of proof: the question isn’t “Can Muslims fit?” but “Can America handle its own ideals?”

Given Rauf’s public role in interfaith dialogue and the post-9/11 climate that made Muslim identity a recurring referendum, the quote reads as both shield and provocation: a bid for normalcy that refuses to apologize for existing.