I've always felt a connection to kids who go to church. I think I'm fundamentally a religiously oriented and religiously minded person. It's very easy for me to communicate with people who have that same grounding, that same vocabulary or modality of thinking and expressing themselves.

Religion has been an important part of my understanding, my inquiry into what it means to be human.

The Quran is many different things, and we also have to see the Quran almost as a secondary source commenting on the Old Testament.

I don't want to test that simple sense of being human. I don't want to transform it.

I consider myself to have been formed by a lot of the locutions and aesthetics and principles of the Muslim way of life, and those are an important part of my childhood and my identity.

I can't be a spokesman for anything other than my own concerns. I have to be free to wrestle with my own preoccupations, and if I'm bringing any political awareness to that process, that mitigates my freedom.

The secret of a happy life is respect. Respect for yourself and respect for others.