I talk about a Christianity that is enlightened enough to separate spirituality from the rest of life. Not just church and state, but knowledge and church.

I don't have much in me left for Somalia, because the country is so broken, it's not realistic to daydream about it.

I am grateful to my father for sending me to school, and that we moved from Somalia to Kenya, where I learned English.

There is one Islam, unreformed, but three sets of Muslims. Medina, Mecca, and. Dissidents, reformers, whatever you want to call them. The first group are the extremists and fundamentalists, the second the great mass of Muslims who just want to live their lives in peace, and the third are reformers.

Most unmarried Somali girls who got pregnant committed suicide. I knew of one girl in Mogadishu who poured a can of gasoline over herself in the living room, with everyone there, and burned herself alive. Of course, if she hadn't done this, her father and brothers would probably have killed her anyway.

I do not believe in God, angels and the hereafter.

It takes a long time to dissolve the bars of a mental cage.