Everyone’s a believer when things are going fine. The real faith is when one becomes patient with tribulations.

My experience on this planet is that if you treat people with respect, they tend to treat you with respect.

There are irrational fears. If you see a woman wearing a hijab and fear is your first thought, something's really wrong.

God is with the broken-hearted. When your heart breaks, it’s a good thing – the breaking of the heart is what opens it up to the light of Allah. The dunya is designed to break your heart, to crush it.

I think that's deeply rooted in Muslim consciousness, the idea of not submitting to anything other than God. "You can abuse me, but you're not going to win me over. But if you treat me with respect and dignity, I'm going to fall in love with you. I'm going to sing your praises all over the world because you're powerful and you treated me with human dignity."

If you don't wake up for Fajr, then don't wake up at all

Muslims have been an almost entirely benevolent force in the 20th century. They did not wreak the havoc the Western powers wreaked on the world. They have not come anywhere near to the environmental degradation that we've done to the planet. So I think Muslims need to be seen in the proper light. They're mostly decent, hardworking people, people with deep family values, and they want to live in peace.