Islam teaches tolerance not hatred universal brotherhood not enmity peace and not violence.

I believe in the religion of Islam. I believe in Allah and peace.

In America we have so many movies and so much media about the Islamic world the sub-continental world but it's not a conversation it's a monologue. It's always from one point of view. 'If we don't tell our own stories no one will tell them' is my mantra.

Any time you stop looking at evil as a black and white thing it's helpful. So the fact that there won't be any obligatory Islamic terrorist stereotypes in movies any more that'd be helpful.

We should have a State in which we could live and breathe as free men and which we could develop according to our own lights and culture and where principles of Islamic social justice could find free play.

Imam Rauf and his backers have every legal right to build their extravagant Islamic center within the lethal radius of Ground Zero. But the rest of us have the right to question why they insist on doing so.

In the early centuries of Islam the great schools of Islamic jurisprudence were built upon the above principles. Basic to all their legal systems they developed the doctrine that liberty is the fundamental basis of law.

Throughout the past there has been a lack of intimacy affection and regard for Islam by Christianity. This to a large extent has been due to a lack of knowledge of the great human and spiritual ideals for which Islam and the teachings of Islam stand.

They do not understand Islam and I think that is one area where perhaps I hope one day I will play a role in actually making people understand what we perceive Islam to be.

This is a good time to ask apologists for the Islamic regime who degrades Islam? Who imposes stoning forced marriage of underage girls and flogging for not wearing the veil? Do such practices represent Iran's ancient history and culture its ethnic and religious diversity? Its centuries of sensual and subversive poetry?