I don't buy anything which is Islamization of knowledge. I don't understand what it means in fact.

When Manuel Valls says there's nothing to understand because "understanding is justifying," he echoes back to Georges W Bush's logic in 2001. When François Hollande says "they are attacking us because of who we are," what does it say about victims in Mali, Baghdad, Ivory Coast or Turkey?

If you do your work, if you are committed at the grassroots level, if you have a vision for the long run (not only short-sighted interest), you can change public opinion.

A Muslim should be sincerely religious AND politically aware.

In my book, the Arab Awakening, I talk about the fact that we have to move from this. All the contemporary ideologies of political Islam have been based on the nation state. The nation state is very problematic but I'm not sure if we have an alternative political model.

The problem is that the constitution should have been and was an opportunity, exactly as Moncef Marzouki tried to do, to bring together the secularists and Islamists.

There is dignity in your being even if there's indignity in what you're doing.