Politics & Power Quote by Feisal Abdul Rauf

The stuttered insistence of "We - we - we are" is the point: Rauf is dramatizing a citizenship that keeps getting forced to reintroduce itself. The repetition works like a verbal ID card, a refusal to let Muslim identity be treated as a foreign add-on. Instead of reaching for lofty abstractions, he lists jobs: doctors, investment bankers, taxi drivers, storekeepers, lawyers. It’s a deliberately boring catalog of American normalcy, the kind that’s supposed to end an argument precisely because it sounds like your neighborhood.

But the quote isn’t just pleading for inclusion; it’s strategically reframing power. "Part of the fabric of America" borrows the language of cohesion and domesticity, then quietly turns it into a warning: tear this thread and you don’t just harm Muslims, you damage the national self-story. The pivot to "being watched by over a billion Muslims worldwide" broadens the audience from U.S. voters to a global public. That’s not melodrama; it’s geopolitical math. How a superpower treats a visible minority becomes propaganda material for allies and adversaries alike.

The subtext is accountability through image: America’s claim to pluralism is a form of soft power, and Islamophobia is a self-inflicted wound. Coming from a theologian (and, in context, a public voice during the post-9/11 era and controversies around Muslim civic presence), the argument threads faith into civics without asking for special treatment. It asks for the basic bargain to be honored, because the world is listening.