What is irreversible in the Arab world is this intellectual revolution, the awakening that we can get rid of dictators. That is here, and the people have this sentiment and this political power. They feel that they can do it, and it's still there. At the same time, we don't know what is going to happen. So to be very quick by saying, "Oh, revolutions and Arab Spring," and - you know, what I'm advocating is to take a cautious optimism as the starting point of our analysis and to look at what is happening.

Every country in Europe needs immigrants for its economic survival.

I can see both trends among the youths: people who are ready for a constructive, critical and active presence, and others who are ready to become invisible Muslims and to compromise to be accepted. I put my hope in the former and pray for the latter.

We have to free the Muslim mind from the obsession with limits and rules and forgetting the path and objective. This is truly a liberating process, and for me this is Islam: liberation from the ego, and in this case liberating ourselves from the wrong understanding of the religion.

Compelling a woman to wear a headscarf is against Islam, and compelling her to remove it is against human rights.

Very often we talk about India and China, but not really Malaysia and Indonesia. The potential in the shift to the East is going to be great and very important for this country.

No one must ever let power or social, economic, or political interest turn him or her away from other human beings, from the attention they deserve and the respect they are entitled to. nothing must ever lead to a person to compromise this principle or faith in favor of a political strategy aimed at saving or protecting a community from some peril. The freely offered, sincere heart of a poor, powerless individual is worth a thousand times more in the sight of God than the assiduously courted, self-interested heart of a rich one.