If you come from Africa with your economic poverty and your cultural riches, and you meet someone like Peter Gabriel or a person from a big record company, and they tell you that what you are doing is marvelous, that makes you feel powerful.

I think that Sufism fits all over the world. The concept is not anything that fits standard Western ideas - it's always related to culture, to music, to religion. It is a dominant religion in Senegal.

In the West, you have always associated the Islamic faith 100 percent with Arab culture. This in itself is a fundamentalist attitude and it is mistaken.

The question of modernization is central to disturbances in the Middle East and in Africa. Everyone is after modernization, no matter where they come from. But you have to be careful about it, and more importantly, you have to have sense about it.

If you come from Africa with your economic poverty and your cultural riches, and you meet someone like Peter Gabriel or a person from a big record company, and they tell you that what you are doing is marvelous, that makes you feel powerful.

I have studied at the school of the world.

Politics is politics; art is art. If you play a political role, you have to stop being an artist.