We should say to the West: "You have been supporting dictators for too many years. Don't expect the people to introduce democracy over night. It is going to take time." It took time with the French revolution, it took time with the Eastern European revolutions. And it is going to take time there.

Destroying the nation state are mainly three things: the global economy, global communication technology and global culture. And this is where we are lost in the process. What could be something that can provide us a transversal political sense of belonging? At the end of the day, without an alternative we end up with populism in the name of very narrow identities.

Even after the whole democratization process, it's quite clear that the United States are not seen in a positive way in all the Muslim-majority countries - in Egypt, in Libya, even in Tunisia - even though we have now a kind of trying to be recognized as democrats by the Islamists who are running, you know, Tunisia and Egypt. But the popular sentiment is very, very negative.

Since the uprisings in the Middle East many scholars have come out saying that freedom comes first before the Shariah. There is also something important that we must keep in mind in our understanding the Shariah, and that is the room for what is permissible should be as wide as possible. So we should leave it open to let people be creative.

What you need to do is protect the structures and dynamics that are helping the people choose. The only thing that we can do is to respect the will of the people when it comes to majority processes. It is not for us to impose a model, it is not for us to impose answers to some critical questions.

Nature is telling us that if you don't respect the environment then you are living with artificial needs and a consumerism that is destroying the very conditions we need to survive.

In my book Radical Reform I made it clear that we cannot talk about the environment or ecology if we don't also deal with the economy. There is a direct link between how we deal with the economy and how we deal with nature.