There is the philosophy embedded in the culture we are living. It is quite clear for example that Arabs have a different culture than Malaysians.

Always walking along despite the dangers and adversities, despite the injustices and horrors, trusting in God so as not to despair of men and events.

To Islamize doesn't make sense to me. But to center, but to have intellectual empathy and modesty - all these dimensions are important on how we look at truth.

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.

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.

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.

We have to be the media when media is silent