To be kind is good. To be kind without expecting anything in return is better.

Even after the whole democratization process, it's quite clear that the United States are not seen in a positive way in all the Muslim-majority countries - in Egypt, in Libya, even in Tunisia - even though we have now a kind of trying to be recognized as democrats by the Islamists who are running, you know, Tunisia and Egypt. But the popular sentiment is very, very negative.

Now no one can deny the fact that whatever is the state of the affairs in the country, you did not have the army controlling the country and you have a pluralistic society anyway.

We should not fool ourselves. When the Quran says wa la qad karamna Bani Adam ["we have honored the Children of Adam"] so yes we should all be free but this should not mean that we must act against the dignity of human beings.

We cannot have a free market since it does not really set us free. It's free for interest, speculation and consumerism to create false needs.

Discomfort levels in our societies are rising, or so it would seem. In theory, we invoke diversity and tolerance. But in real life, we raise our hackles and withdraw into ourselves.

I focus on Islamic applied ethics in many fields, and here I am saying that coming back to the Qu'ran and the sunnah as our reference point does not mean that we depend for our ethics on 'Islam as opposed to the others'.