I am an American citizen born in Kuwait of Egyptian parents. I grew up in Great Britain, Malaysia, and Egypt and have lived in the United States since 1965, when I was seventeen.

In the 20th century, the Muslim world created a vision of religious nationalism. Turkey, for example, had to be ethnically Turkish. Kurds, Armenians, other minorities didn’t have a place in such a vision of a...

When I arrived in America, I experienced serious culture shock. For someone with a religious upbringing, the 1960s were an extremely difficult time. Even though religion was a big part of the civil rights and...

Americans must outgrow the unbecoming arrogance that leads us to assert that America somehow owns a monopoly on goodness and truth – a belief that leads some to view the world as but a stage...

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...

I read, read enormously on all different fields of Islamic thought, from philosophy to Islamic literature, poetry, exegeses, knowledge of the Hadith, the teachings of the prophet. That’s how I trained myself. And then I...

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...

I as a Muslim want you, as a Christian, to really be a perfect Christian. I want my Jewish friends to be perfect Jews, to live according to the highest principles of what it means...

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

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...

It is part of my responsibility as a bridge builder to speak the truth about what’s great about America, what we’ve done right, and what our less glorious moments. And many people feel that the...

Koran says whoever believes in God in the last day shall be saved. It is a religion whose very name, Islam, comes from the word Shalom, which means peace. It’s about establishing peace. We greet...

I am a supporter of the state of Israel.

I’m not an agent from any government, even if some of you may not believe it. I’m not. I’m a peacemaker.

Staying chaste until marriage, a commandment of my faith, was one of the most difficult challenges of my young life. I had a powerful sense that if I did not get a grip on my...

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

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.

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

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.

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.

The ultimate vision is to instate in the Muslim world the notion of multiculturalism, which is part of our heritage and history, part of the fundamental, mainstream ideals of Islam.

If Muslims curse the Christians, then the Christians will curse the Muslims. And people will curse Allah, and Allah will hold us responsible for that.

My life has been devoted to peacemaking.

The opposition tried to brand us as the ‘Ground Zero megamosque.’ The language was deliberately wordsmithed in order to arouse hostility against us. But the idea that the Jewish mayor of New York City and...

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...

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...

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

The world wants to like America.

Any organization or any individual that targets civilians and kills them for political agenda is a terrorist organization.

There are moderates in Israel. There are moderates in Iran, there are moderates in the Republican Party, moderates in the Democratic Party. What we need to do is we need link all of these moderates...

I was completely surrounded by religion from a young time. I was taught by my father. I engaged in discussions with him and many of these scholars who visited and came around the dining table,...

Fanaticism and terrorism have no place in Islam.

We tend to forget in the West that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than Al Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims.

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...

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....

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.

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

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...

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...

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...

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

Yusuf Qaradawi is probably the most well-known legal authority in the whole Muslim world today.

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...

Our enemy is not Islam. Islam is not the enemy of America; Americans are not the enemy of Islam. Our real enemy is extremism and radicalism.

Sufis teach that we first must battle and destroy the evil within ourselves by shining upon it the good within, and then we learn to battle the evil in others by helping their higher selves...

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

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...

What’s brilliant about the United States system of government is separation of power. Not only the executive, legislative, judicial branches, but also the independence of the military from civilians, an independent media and press, an...

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...

The American principles of democracy expresses the deepest values of the Sharia both structurally and in the government… Sharia requires us Muslims anywhere to abide by the law of the land.