There is a claim coming from the West that says that all art must be outside any moral consideration. I can understand this as a provocation, but I also believe that we can still have very profound creativity with a moral sense.

You can’t be good to others if you’re not strict with yourself. The more shallow you are with yourself, the harsher you are with others. The more profound you are with yourself, the more generous you are with others

National politics and elections are dominated by emotions, by lack of self-confidence, by fear of the other, by insecurity, by infection of the body politic by the virus of victimhood.

I don't think we should take the emotional reactions of a few people as more representative than those of the millions of people who took to the street in a non-violent way against dictators.

Islam is a religion of justice and dignity, and we are taught to never keep silent when facing injustice, discrimination and double standards.

I think we are making a mistake, a very big mistake if we look at what we call the Arab Awakening only by looking at the whole dynamics in political and not in economic terms.

In the Muslim-majority countries you can't do without Islam, we can't do without their culture, in which way they are going to come back to this Islamic reference to find a way to deal with the true challenges and not the superficial political questions.