I've lived here [in Egypt] among Christians and Muslims, and we never had a conflict. Now you have a conflict between Christians and Muslims and Baha'is and Sunni and Shia. The Salafists are trying to abort the revolution and make it religious, though the revolution started secular.

We cannot be liberated as women in a society built on class oppression or gender oppression or religious oppression.

Democracy is not just freedom to criticize the government or head of state, or to hold parliamentary elections. True democracy obtains only when the people - women, men, young people, children - have the ability to change the system of industrial capitalism that has oppressed them since the earliest days of slavery: a system based on class division, patriarchy, and military might, a hierarchical system that subjugates people merely because they are born poor, or female, or dark-skinned.

Women are suffering because they are being excluded. The high military council excluded women from the committee to change the constitution [of Egypt]. We cannot be liberated as women in a society built on class oppression or gender oppression or religious oppression.

There is a proverb that says, ‘Talk so that I may know who you are.’ But I say, ‘Show me your eyes and I will know who you are.

I had to educate myself about female circumcision, about the clitoris, about sexology. We studied gynecology only. Pregnancy, maternal care, etc.

To have arrived at the truth means that one no longer fears death. For death and truth are similar in that they both require a great courage if one wishes to face them.