Whatever title or office we may be privileged to hold, it is what we do that defines who we are ... Each of us must decide what kind of person we want to be-what kind of legacy that we want to pass on.

Being queen is overrated.

The hardest [part] is some of the misperceptions that are leveled against me as a person and against Muslim women.

Religion and modernity are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Values are the shields that you carry throughout life and it protects you from whatever life throws at you.

I have nothing against the veil. And I think that, wrongly, many in the West look at the veil as a symbol of oppression. Now, as long as a woman chooses to wear the veil, because that's her belief and because of her own - that's a personal relationship with God, so she should be free to dress in whichever way she wants.

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.