If you know how to live, even death is good news

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 need to realize that we should be on the side of any human being who is oppressed.

We always think from where we come from. We always think from the sources that shape our understanding. I think about the world through the lens of my Islamic tradition. I accept this but I must also have intellectual humility.

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.

Your country needs religious leaders and religious politicians

What I see now is that even with the Islamists, who have been portraying themselves as the alternative to corruption and dictatorship and in defence of more transparency, there is one respect in which they have now changed completely. Since the beginning of the 1920's, Islamism was very close in positioning in some respects to 'liberation theology'. But that is no longer the case.