We are not competing for the good when we only compete for numbers, being preoccupied with how many converts we are gaining. The true competition for good only happens when we are implementing our values of justice.

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?

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.

Now no one can deny the fact that whatever is the state of the affairs in the country, you did not have the army controlling the country and you have a pluralistic society anyway.

I want the American Muslims to tell the leaders what they are telling me all the time. I want this internal debate to happen and the Muslims cannot just criticize the leadership without being involved. At the end of the day, you have the leadership you deserve.

Islam came to teach us that there is no faith without intelligence and here we are: destroying our intelligence in the name of faith.

If there is a smoke, there is a fire, the saying goes, That is quite true, but one should find what the fire is, and who lit it.