Reason Writers Around Town: Cathy Young on Imam Abdul Feisal Rauf
Writing at FrumForum, Contributing Editor Cathy Young looks at the record of Imam Abdul Feisal Rauf, the founder of the proposed mosque/cultural center in lower Manhattan. As Young writes:
In one narrative, Rauf is the very model of a modern Muslim moderate: a brave champion of peace, tolerance, and Islam with a human face. In the other, he is a stealth jihadist who offers a friendly façade to gullible Westerners while preaching extremism to other Muslims and pursuing a hidden agenda of replacing the U.S. Constitution with Koran-based Sharia law.
But the portrait that emerges from Rauf's actual record differs from both these versions – and illustrates some pitfalls of the quest for moderate Islam.
