America has an immense amount of power, but it doesn't use it in any benevolent way. It uses it to maintain a status quo.

I don't have any control over what other people do, and they don't represent me or my faith.

People say to you, 'you've changed', or something like that, well, I hope, for the sake of God, that you have changed, because I don't want to be the same person all my life. I want to be growing, I want to be expanding. I want to be changing. Because animate things change, inanimate things don&'t change. Dead things don't change. And the heart should be alive, it should be changing, it should be moving, it should be growing, its knowledge should be expanding.

What comes to a person in his or her life, however difficult it may be, perhaps will help a person move closer to God. The response to tribulation is abr, which is patience, perseverance, steadfastness, and resolve. Allāh loves the patient; part of the reason the tribulation comes is to draw the quality of patience out of them - He loves this quality.

After that one fitnah, every time it calms down in one place, it starts somewhere else.

I don't have the power to issue papal decrees.

I'm amazed at the courage of the journalists on the frontlines in Iraq, but we need intellectual courage in our community.