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.
Tariq RamadanIn the Muslim-majority countries you can't do without Islam, we can't do without their culture, in which way they are going to come back to this Islamic reference to find a way to deal with the true challenges and not the superficial political questions.
Tariq RamadanIn its haste to bolster nationalism, in its obsession with security, Europe is losing its soul.
Tariq RamadanSalafi is a very broad concept in Islam. What we have now is, like, for example, the Nour Party in Egypt or the Salafi in Tunisia are people who, in fact, we call very often Wahhabi, following the Saudi school of thought and law. And they are literalists in the way where it's black and white, there's a very narrow interpretation of the scriptural sources. For decades, we knew that they were there, but they were not involved in politics. What is completely new for all of us over the last years is that they are now within the political arena and playing the democratic game.
Tariq Ramadan