Everybody's social life in Jordan revolves around family.

I'm amazed by the misconceptions about Muslim women and the Arab world that I hear, and that really does hurt me.

First of all, in many Muslim countries women have incredible amounts of freedom, sometimes more than in some countries in Europe. So you cannot just make a generalized statement about women. Second, Islam is not the problem. It's tradition. It's culture. It's age-old mind-sets that need to be changed.

We're programmed to believe that time is the enemy, that it takes away from us or that it diminishes us. I have found that it's done the opposite to me. Life is in perfect balance. It's just that our perception of it isn't.

To achieve a lasting peace in the Middle East takes guts, not guns.

I don't think people by nature are extremists. You will never find a population of extremists. Extremists have existed throughout the centuries on all religions. And what happens is, extremists start to have more leverage when the situation is bad.

Polls show that Arabs admire a lot of the Western values, cultural aspects in the West. It is more about policies than about way of life.