Our task is to change the world for the better, not to adapt ourselves to the world.

We must master our egoism, and through this mastery, step outside ourselves and educate ourselves in giving. Fasting requires that we rediscover all that is alive around us, and reconcile ourselves with our environment.

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

It is only through the opposition of ideas that we can learn to be self-critical, to work towards intellectual humility.

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.

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.

I had no intention to cover my tracks since I am not a politician and I do not represent anybody.