"My life has been devoted to peacemaking"
About this Quote
A spare declaration of vocation, it names the axis of Feisal Abdul Rauf’s public life: peacemaking as a discipline of bridge-building, restraint, and moral courage. A Sufi-trained imam who led a mosque in lower Manhattan, Rauf became known for insisting that Islamic faith and American civic ideals are not only compatible but mutually reinforcing. Through the American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative, he pursued interfaith dialogue, scholarly work, and public diplomacy, including State Department-sponsored speaking tours after 9/11. The aim was not merely to quiet tensions but to put relationship at the center of politics and to replace suspicion with trust.
The commitment was tested most visibly during the controversy over an Islamic community center proposed near Ground Zero. Rauf framed the project as a gesture toward healing and mutual understanding; critics saw it as insensitivity or provocation. That storm revealed what peacemaking demands: a willingness to stand in the line of fire, to hear the pain of others without surrendering one’s own dignity, and to keep arguing for coexistence when outrage is the easier currency. Peacemaking, in this sense, is an active stance. It requires building institutions, hosting conversations across fault lines, and refusing the seductions of grievance.
Rooted in a Sufi ethic, it also begins within. The pursuit of social peace flows from inner work on compassion, humility, and the cleansing of anger. Rauf’s writings on the resonance between sharia’s ethical aims and the U.S. constitutional order tried to translate that interior commitment into a civic idiom: justice, mercy, and the common good.
Spoken amid a climate eager for clash-of-civilizations narratives, the statement functions as counterprogramming. It asserts identity through reconciliation rather than antagonism, and it invites a measure of hope: that sustained, patient engagement can change the story a society tells itself about us and them.
The commitment was tested most visibly during the controversy over an Islamic community center proposed near Ground Zero. Rauf framed the project as a gesture toward healing and mutual understanding; critics saw it as insensitivity or provocation. That storm revealed what peacemaking demands: a willingness to stand in the line of fire, to hear the pain of others without surrendering one’s own dignity, and to keep arguing for coexistence when outrage is the easier currency. Peacemaking, in this sense, is an active stance. It requires building institutions, hosting conversations across fault lines, and refusing the seductions of grievance.
Rooted in a Sufi ethic, it also begins within. The pursuit of social peace flows from inner work on compassion, humility, and the cleansing of anger. Rauf’s writings on the resonance between sharia’s ethical aims and the U.S. constitutional order tried to translate that interior commitment into a civic idiom: justice, mercy, and the common good.
Spoken amid a climate eager for clash-of-civilizations narratives, the statement functions as counterprogramming. It asserts identity through reconciliation rather than antagonism, and it invites a measure of hope: that sustained, patient engagement can change the story a society tells itself about us and them.
Quote Details
| Topic | Peace |
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