In 1985 as a teenager in Kenya, I was an adamant member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Of course, the overwhelming majority of Muslims are not terrorists or sympathetic to terrorists. Equating all Muslims with terrorism is stupid and wrong. But acknowledging that there is a link between Islam and terror is appropriate and necessary.

I would like to be judged on the validity of my arguments, not as a victim.

We had a world dominated by the Soviet Union on the one hand, and the Americans on the other hand. They called it the Cold War. But it wasn't cold. I am someone who comes from the third world. In the third world, the cold war wasn't cold. Millions had been killed. It was a proxy war.

The idea that if people are just friendly and demonstrate they want peace, that will be answered with good will - that is really naive.

The veil deliberately marks women as private and restricted property, nonpersons. The veil sets women apart from men and apart from the world; it restrains them, confines them, grooms them for docility. A mind can be cramped just as a body may be, and a Muslim veil blinkers both your vision and your destiny. It is the mark of a kind of apartheid, not the domination of a race but of a sex.

My conscience is informed by reason. It's like Kant's categorical imperative: behave to others as you would wish they behaved to you.