Ramadan is, in its essence, a month of humanist spirituality.

History is replete with ideologies of freedom, justice, liberation of the downtrodden and the exploited, that have been turned against the very people they had mobilised, or that have reproduced the same logic of exclusion and terror toward those whom they claimed to set free.

You can be a very charitable capitalist. Like [Nicola] Sarkozy was saying, we have to 'moralise capitalism', which for me is a contradiction in terms.

An 'Islamic economy' or 'Islamic finance' doesn't mean anything to me. But I do think that in the multi-polar world, it is time to find new partners, to find a new balance in the economic order. And this could help you to find an alternative way forward.

In its haste to bolster nationalism, in its obsession with security, Europe is losing its soul.

The Turkish road is not my model because I am critical of the way you are dealing with freedom of expression, of how you are dealing with the treatment of minorities, and your economic vision.

I am dealing with people with both sides. I see people who are liberating themselves but they want to forget the world. And I see people who want to liberate the world but they forget themselves. Neither is the way I want to go.