I do not think there is such a thing as a "clash of civilizations." When I say that Muslims as Muslims cannot be represented in the West, I was being ironic, and also referring to the fact that ninety percent of the time when people talk about "the problem of Muslims" in the West, it is to complain about the fact that Muslims have not "integrated."

Tradition is not something a man can learn; not a thread he picks up when he feels like it; any more than a man can choose his own ancestors. Someone lacking a tradition who would like to have one is like a man unhappily in love.

It seems to me perfectly possible to act humanely towards other beings, whether humans or animals or plants. One simply has to learn how to behave. To behave "humanely" it is perfectly possible to do without the notion of "humanity."

Agency has become a catch word. In a way, this intoxication with ‘agency’ is the product of liberal individualism. The ability of individuals to fashion themselves, to change their live, is given ideological priority over the relation within which they themselves are actually formed, situated, and sustained.

To behave "humanely" it is perfectly possible to do without the notion of "humanity."

I think we need to think about Islamic tradition as a way of asking questions that cut across (and transgress) the assumptions of a purely secular world in which we already know how things stand for individual subjects as well as for societies.

Certainly in order to understand the natural world one needs clarity, logic, and the capacity for theory building. But that understanding tends to improve because and to the extent that it is provisional, hypothetical, when it looks for disconfirmation in the particular rather than final proof as a universal.