[What's Right with Islam: Is What's Right with America] [By: Abdul Rauf, Feisal] [April, 2005]

An American imam offers answers for today's toughest questions about Islam, and a vision for a  reconciliation between Islam and the West.

One of the pressing questions of our time is what went wrong in the relationship between Muslims and the West. Continuing global violence in the name of Islam reflects the deepest fears by certain Muslim factions of Western political, cultural, and economic encroachment. The solution to the current antagonism requires finding common ground upon which to build mutual respect and understanding. Who better to offer such an analysis than an American imam, someone with a foot in each world and the tools to examine the common roots of both Western and Muslim cultures; someone to explain to the non-Islamic West not just what went wrong with Islam, but what's right with Islam.

Focused on finding solutions, not on determining fault, this is ultimately a hopeful, inspiring book. What's Right with Islam systematically lays out the reasons for the current dissonance between these cultures and offers a foundation and plan for improved relations. Wide-ranging in scope, What's Right with Islam elaborates in satisfying detail a vision for a Muslim world that can eventually embrace its own distinctive forms of democracy and capitalism, aspiring to a new Cordoba - a time when Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all other faith traditions will live together in peace and prosperity.

 

 

Feisal Abdul Rauf is the imam of Masjid al-Farah in New York City. Shortly after the attacks of September 11, he appeared on numerous radio and television shows, including BBC World, ABC News, CBS Evening News, CNN, and 60 Minutes. Born in Kuwait to a long line of imams, Abdul Rauf was educated in England, Egypt, and Malaysia. He is also a graduate of Columbia University in the United States. In 1997, Imam Abdul Rauf founded the ASMA Society, a not-for-profit educational and cultural organization dedicated to building bridges between the American public and American Muslims, and cofounded the Cordoba Initiative, a multi-faith effort to help heal the relationship between the Muslim world and America. A trustee of the Islamic Center of New York, he is on the board of One Voice, a group whose initiative is to bring about peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and was recently appointed as a member of the Council of 100 Leaders to the World Economic Forum on West-Islamic World Dialogue. Abdul Rauf is the author of two previous books, Islam: A Search for Meaning and Islam: A Sacred Law, What Every Muslim Should Know About the Shari'ah.