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.

Many times I have asked Muslim women not to nurture the victim mentality. stand up for your rights

Lack of consistency is a weakness shared by all nations.

We must re-center philosophy within our frame of reference which I think is the way to deal with it.

The perception in the Arab world now is that we are having secularists against Islamists, and that's it. So the secularists are progressive; the Islamists are reactionary, conservative. This perception is wrong.

To those who say "Sufism is apolitical" or "no politics," I respond: "No politics is politics." Look at the very old African Sufi tradition, the Asian Sufi tradition, or the North African Sufi tradition. Then you get it and understand what Sufism is all about wisdom, courage and resistance.

Political rhetoric leads only to confusion.