Early Life
Rauf was born in Kuwait. His father, Egyptian Imam and Sunni scholar Muhammad Abdul Rauf (1917–2004), moved with the younger Rauf to New York City in the 1960s. The elder Rauf assisted with efforts to create the multimillion dollar Islamic Cultural Center of New York, the first building designed as a mosque in New York City, which took 25 years to complete and opened in 1991. His father, Abdul Rauf, was actively involved in the American Civil Rights Movement with Malcolm X.
Rauf studied physics at Columbia University, where he earned his Bachelor's Degree in nuclear engineering in 1969, before earning a master's degree in plasma physics at Stevens Institute in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Read more about this topic: Feisal Abdul Rauf
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“I looked at my daughters, and my boyhood picture, and appreciated the gift of parenthood, at that moment, more than any other gift I have ever been given. For what person, except one’s own children, would want so deeply and sincerely to have shared your childhood? Who else would think your insignificant and petty life so precious in the living, so rich in its expressiveness, that it would be worth partaking of what you were, to understand what you are?”
—Gerald Early (20th century)
“. . . you may think I waste my breath
Pretending that there can be passion
That has more life in it than death,”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)