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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

-Tariq Ramadan

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You Can’t Be Good

Tariq Ramadan

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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

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We Have To Free The Muslim Mind From The Obsession With Limits And Rules And Forgetting The Path And Objective. This Is Truly A Liberating Process, And For Me This Is Islam: Liberation From The Ego, And In This Case Liberating Ourselves From The Wrong Understanding Of The Religion.

We Need To Revisit How The Prophet Dealt With Water, Animals, In How He Talked About Slaughtering, Caring For Plants And So Forth. Respect Towards Nature Is A Part Of Islam. This Is Essential But Muslims Are Not Aware. The Whole World Is Talking About Global Warming And Respecting Nature But Muslims Are Not Doing Enough Of That.

Mankind Must Be Positively And Constructively Wary Of Mankind, Of Their Fellow Man, Of Their Families, Of The Members Of Their Faith Community, Of Their Fellow-citizens.

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When I Go Back To The Quran I See That The Context Of Revelation Is Creation In Its Entirety. The Universe Is A Revelation And This Of Course Includes Nature, Plants And Animals. In Other Words, What Is Coming From The Quran As Rules And Objectives Are Set Within The Larger Scheme Of The Universe And Nature As Part Of Creation.

We Cannot Have A Free Market Since It Does Not Really Set Us Free. It's Free For Interest, Speculation And Consumerism To Create False Needs.

Our Emotions Are Often Beautiful, But They Can Also Be Dangerous. They Represent Our Spontaneity, And Seem To Speak To Us Of Our Freedom.

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In Its Haste To Bolster Nationalism, In Its Obsession With Security, Europe Is Losing Its Soul.

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In Islam, Rules Are Important, Like The Prophet Said Innal Halaala Bayyinun, Wa Innal Haraama Bayyinun ["what Is Halal Is Clear, What Is Haram Is Clear"]. The Goal Is Not To Diminish The Importance Of Rules, But To Have The Right Priorities.

Instead Of Looking Outside Of Ourselves And Counting Potential Enemies, Fasting Summons Us To Turn Our Glance Inward, And To Take The Measure Of Our Greatest Challenge: The Self, The Ego, In Our Own Eyes And As Others See Us.

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Discomfort Levels In Our Societies Are Rising, Or So It Would Seem. In Theory, We Invoke Diversity And Tolerance. But In Real Life, We Raise Our Hackles And Withdraw Into Ourselves.

In Fact All The Islamists, That Is The Reformists Not The Salafis, Now They All Say That They Want A Civil State, A Civil State With Islamic Reference Points. They Are Not Talking About An Islamic State, Or Sharia In The Way This Was Once Understood In The Fight Against The Colonisers, Or Just Afterwards In The 70's, 80's And 90's.

South Africa Is Labouring To Find Its Revolutionary Path; The Colours Of The Rainbow Nation Have Difficulty Blending Together; The Wealthy Elites (white, Black Or Indian) Profit From De Facto Segregation.

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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.

We Need Modesty Not Only In The Way We Dress; We Need Intellectual Modesty.

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Greek Philosophy Departs From The Assumption That We Can Understand The World Autonomously Using Our Rational Faculties. Islam Is Not Saying This.

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The Universe Is Pregnant With Signs That Recall The Presence Of The Creator.

In The West Or Anywhere Else, The Treatment Of People In An Undignified Way (structural And Institutionalized Racism Against Latinos Or African American Citizens) As Well As A Dangerous Dehumanization Of Some People (in Palestine, Iraq, Africa Or Asia) Are Simply Unacceptable.

We Fail When We Try To Give Simple Answers To Complicated Problems.

One Would Love Nonetheless To Know How To Be A Man, How To Be A Woman Before God, In The Mirror Of One's Own Conscience, In The Looks Of Those Who Surround Us. One Would Wish To Find The Strength To Beautify One's Thoughts And To Purify One's Heart. It Is Everyone's Hope And Expectation To Live In Serenity And To Plod Along In Transparency: The Palms Of The Hands Patiently Directed Towards Heaven, At The Heart Of All This Modernity.

Anyone Who Tries To Separate Or Divorce Domestic Politics From International Politics Does Not Get It, And That Might Be Dangerous For The Future Of Western Muslims.

Feeling Sympathy And Searching For Explanations Isn't The Same As Believing That The Violence Is Justified.

I Have Never, So Far, In All The Studies I Have Done, Met A Contradiction Between What The Human, Experimental And Natural Sciences Are Telling Us And The Islamic Rules. In Fact, The Opposite Is True: Anything That Is Coming From The Modern Sciences Is Helping Me Better Understand The Text. It's Not A Contradiction. It's A Relation.

Just Take Germany And The Suffering Of Jews During And After The Second World War. It Would Be Legal To Ridicule And To Laugh At This Suffering, But Since It Was Such A Trauma On The European Conscience, No One Is Going To Do It. It Is An Open Scar, An Open Wound, An Open Reality.

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The United States Of America Or The Western Countries, They Don't Have A Problem With Islamists As Long As They Are Neoliberal Capitalists And Promoting The Economic Order. And The Best Example Is The Petro-monarchies. The Petro-monarchies, They Don't Want Democracy. They Say There Is No Democracy In Islam. But They Are Within The Economic System.

The Only Way To Resist Colonialism Is Through Education.

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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.

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Double Standard

Very Often We Talk About India And China, But Not Really Malaysia And Indonesia. The Potential In The Shift To The East Is Going To Be Great And Very Important For This Country.

Shaking Up Whole Region Means That Israel Needs The Us For Its Safety And Military Camps Are "flourishing" Everywhere In The Middle East. It Has Been Said That Barack Obama Is Less Interested In The Middle East. I Don't Think So. This Mess Has Been Created And Maintained. Maybe The Us Is Pretending To Be Less Interested, However, It Allows Them To Take Their Power Back When It Comes To Security.

Those Young Ones Who Want To Try Military Jihad Are Facing A Triple Issue. First Of All, They Are Missing The Point When It Comes To Understanding What There Is At Stake From A Political Viewpoint. How Come So Many Of Them Are Going To Syria And So Few To Palestine, Even Though, When It Comes To Symbolism, Palestine Definitively Wins.then, It Is Essential To Understand That It Is Not A Religious Matter. Finally, Let's Not Forget About The Recruiters Behind Their Screens. Those Ones Are Quite Skillful And Well-supported Financially.

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If Barack Obama Was To Say Egypt, With The Muslim Brotherhood, Is An Ally, He's Going To Be Destroyed Here By, You Know, The Opposition Saying, "how Come You Can Say That The Islamists Are Your Ally When These People Are The Same Who Are Hamas, And Hamas Is Against Israel?" It's The End Of It. So He's Saying, "we Are Just Wait And See; We Are Trying To Deal."

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Having Traveled A Lot And Met People From Different Horizons It Makes You More Humble And Ready To Listen.

Fear And Its Accompanying Emotional Reactions Have Become Part Of The Public Mindset. Such Reactions, While Often Legitimate, Are Also Being Exploited With Increasing Frequency For Political Ends.

Pushing The Limits, To Be Thought Provoking, Pushing People To Think And Question The Limits, It's Not Always Bad For The Rules If You're Confident Because It Can Even Strengthen Your Understanding Of Religion In The Process.

Thought Provoking

I Think What We Are Seeing Is A Vicious Circle: By Covering The Controversies And The Conflicting Realities, It Creates A Much Distorted Perception Of Islam And Muslims. When A Minority Is Being Taken As A Majority, It Creates A Wrong Image.

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If You Look At How We Are Destroying And Disrespecting Creation It Is Obvious That Is Something Is Not Clear In Our Understanding. We Overemphasize Rules But We Don't Understand The Objective.

When You're Overwhelmed By Your Emotion, You Listen Less And You Judge More. This Is Also The Reality Of The Dogmatic Mind.

The Best Measure Of A Successful Life Is The Way We Turn Away, We Renounce, And Even By The Way We Depart It.

You're Asking Me How Not To Doubt. Good Question.my Answer Is, You Can't. This Is Life

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For Me I Made It Clear That I Wanted To Meet With Both Sides Of The Political Spectrum.

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Only In The Crucible Of Self-mastery Can Freedom Be Smelted

The Month Of Ramadan Is The World's Most Widespread Fast And Yet Its Teachings Are Minimised, Neglected And Even Betrayed (through Literal Application Of Rules That Overlooks Their Ultimate Objective).

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Victim Mentality

You're A Man, But The Day You Raise Your Voice To Your Mother, You're Not Anymore.

Life Is Not Black And White When It Comes To Perception.

Black And White

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Saying That The Origin Of The Islamic State (is) Is Within The Muslim Brotherhood Organisation Only Strengthens Is.

Intellectual Modesty Is Humility As To What I Know; Intellectual Humility Is Modesty As To What I Do Not Know

The Philosophical Connection Between The Islamic World And The West Is Much Closer Than I Thought. Doubt Did Not Begin With Descartes. We Have This Construction Today That The West And Islam Are Entirely Separate Worlds. This Is Wrong.

The Muslim Contribution To The Future Of America Is To Not Only Speak Out As Muslims, But To Also Speak Out As Citizens In The Name Of Our Common Values. Our Main Contribution Is To Reconcile The American Society With Its Own Values, Those That Are Not In Contradiction To Islam. We Have A Duty Of Consistency.

The Media Is Putting A Lot Of Emphasis On The Few People That Are Destroying, While It Won't Report On The Silent Majority Of People Who Are Constructing, Building And Trying To Find Their Way.

A Time Will Come When You're Going To Be Numerous But Your Impact In The World Will Be Like Nothing

As Muslims, We Must Have An Active Presence Based On Ethical And Moral Consistency. We Need To Be Very Vocal, To Inform People, To Demonstrate When Necessary. We Need To Write So That The People Understand That What They Are Getting From The Media And Politicians Is Biased And Not Accurate. And This Is True Especially When It Comes To Some Communities Within The U.s. Or With Respect To The Middle East And Africa. This Is What I Am Expecting From A New Generation Of Leaders: Meet These Expectations Of Moral Consistency.

Because Ethics Is Fundamentally About Questioning The Ends, The Goals And Aims Of Our Actions, We Must Come Back To The Rules And Ask Why. So We Must Return To The Philosophy Of Law, The Raison D'etre And The Point Of What We're Asked To Do. It's Not Easy, It's Very Demanding And It Needs Intellectual Courage.

There Are Certain Things That We Cannot Understand, Like Why We Pray Five Times A Day, For Example. But The Fact That We Choose To Pray Is Understandable.

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.

Criticizing To Destroy Is Easy, Thinking In Order To Build Is Much More Difficult To Achieve

Intellect Is A Part Of A Good Faith. Intellect Is The Light, The Heart Is The Direction.

We Need To Acknowledge That There Is A Real Issue With How The Scriptures Are Being Interpreted. Whenever I Am Told That Terrorists Are Not Muslim, I Systematically Reply That They Actually Are, And They Cannot Be Marginalised, The Same Way They Are Marginalising Other Muslim People. Scriptures Are Quoted Even Though Their Interpretations Are Twisted. In The Face Of Misinterpretation The Only Way Out Would Be Using Another Interpretation Of The Scriptures.

Things Need To Be Properly Named. Political Confusion Starts With Terminology Confusion. Islamism Implies Some Sort Of Political And Social Plan For Muslim People. In That Classification, We Find Different Categories.

We Must Delve Deep Into History The Better To Engage A True Dialogue Of Civilisations. Fear Of The Present Can Impose Upon The Past Its Own Biased Vision.

When Terrorism Is Directly Aiming At Western Countries, It Is Automatically And Abnormally Enlarged In Order To Instill Emotions And Fear. However, When Attacks Happen In The Middle East, Is It Conveniently Downplayed And Less Talked About. Unless They Would Benefit More From A Heavy Coverage.

You Can't Have Anything Happening Today Within The Petro-monarchies, Is Going To Be Too Risky For The United States And The Oil Interests There.

The Discriminations That Are Found In The Muslim Majority Countries Are More Cultural Than Islamic. .... I Have Always Said To The Muslim Women, Please Do Not Nurture The Victim Mentality. Stand Up For Your Rights.

Saying That The Origin Of The Islamic State (is) Is Within The Muslim Brotherhood Organisation Only Strengthens Is. This Is What The Israeli Government Asserts When Claiming That Hamas And Is Are The Exact Same Thing. By Saying So, The Historical Resistance [against The Israeli Occupation] Is Viewed As Unlawful, Called Extremism And Terrorism.

Malaysia Is A Country Unlike Any Other: Full Of Promise And Fragility. Its History, Cultural And Religious Diversity Make It A Rich, Compelling And Surprising Land.

Always Walking Along Despite The Dangers And Adversities, Despite The Injustices And Horrors, Trusting In God So As Not To Despair Of Men And Events.

I Am Too Old To Think That Numbers Are Creating Change

The Message Of Islam Asks You To Be Intellectually, Spiritually, Socially, And Politically Independent

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.

This Is The Problem We Have With Many Muslim Leaders: They Claim To Differentiate Between Domestic And Foreign Issues And They Are Obsessed With Being Accepted, At Sitting At The Table Of Power In Order To Talk (or Rather To Listen) And To Be Tolerated. This Is The Starting Point Of Our Weakness. It Is In Our Minds Because We Do Not Realize We Are Part Of The System.

We Need More Citizens That Are Committed And Courageous.

There Is Something Which Is Going To Be One Of The Main Challenges In The Muslim World Today, In The Muslim-majority Countries In The Arab World, Is The Religious Credibility. How Are You Going To React To What Is Said About Islam? So, By Touching The Prophet Of Islam, The Reaction Should Be, Who Is Going To Be The Guardian?

There Is Nothing More Islamic Than Critical Thinking.

Critical Thinking

Modesty Is The Way You Deal With Beauty Not The Way You Avoid It.

Sometimes People Confuse Silence As Wisdom When In Fact It Is Compromise.

It's Okay To Feel The Need For Protection If There Is A Real External Threat. But To Feel Protective From The Inside, It's A Kind Of Jail: You Get So Protective That You Cannot Get Out Of The Box.

Is [islamic State] Has Played A Major Role In Helping Bashar Al-assad To Reposition Syria On The International Scene. Now, It Is Almost Impossible To Come Up With A Solution That Would Exclude Him. The Political Game Appears To Be Very Cynical Indeed.

Unfortunately There Are Some Trends That Are Changing This But You Don't Have For Example As Strict And Narrow Understanding Of The Relationship Between Men And Women. And Then There Is The Philosophy We Have To Extract In The Relationship Between Text And Culture.

There Is One God. We Have An Epistemic Center. There Is Meaning.

The Problem With Salafis Is That They Are Religiously Sincere And Politically Naïve. And They Allow Themselves To Be Supported By People Who Have No Religious Sincerity But Who Are Politically Very Smart, Especially When It Comes To Their Economic Interests.

Unsettled Middle East, In These Times Where The People Are Trying To Find Their Way Towards Democracy, Could Be Interesting For Many Reasons - For Weapons To Be Sold, For New Geostrategic Interests To Be Protected, And Something That We Are Not Talking About, Which Is The Israeli-palestinian Conflict. The People Who Are Lost In The Whole Discussion Here Are The Palestinians. We Have Demonstrations In Palestine In West Bank. Nobody Is Covering This. It's As If They Don't Exist Anymore. And This Is, In Fact, Central. And Israel Is Silent.

We Must Re-center Philosophy Within Our Frame Of Reference Which I Think Is The Way To Deal With It.

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.

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.

Lack Of Consistency Is A Weakness Shared By All Nations.

I Don't Like This Vision That Turkey Is Successful Because It Is As Successful As The Western Powers In Economic Terms. But I Do Think They Are Trying To Find A New Space In The Multi-polar World, And This Is What I Am Advocating. I Don't Think That Muslims Have An Alternative Model.

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.

Self Confidence

Humility Is Knowing That You Can Get An Answer From Anybody: Be It A Child, Another Person, Or Nature.

No One Can Deny That Some Islamist Groups Have Credential And Popularity. But That Does Not Mean They Are A Majority. If We Are Serious About Democracy We Cannot Blame The People For Choosing What They Want. We Must Promote The Kinds Of Procedures And Processes That Are Helping The People Move Ahead.

Jihadists Are Acting Against The Interests Of Every Single Country.

If People Who Cherish Freedom, Who Know The Importance Of Mutual Respect And Are Aware Of The Imperative Necessity To Establish A Constructive And Critical Debate, If These People Are Not Ready To Speak Out, To Be More Committed And Visible, Then We Can Expect Sad, Painful Tomorrows. The Choice Is Ours.

Still I Have Been Invited I Don't Know How Many Times To Turkey, Where Turkey Has Been Following Very Quickly In The Footsteps Of What Is Sometimes Referred To As The Movement Of Cyber-dissidents. They Have Been Training Young People And Also Encouraging Them To Come Into Contact With Western Muslims.

Now No One Can Deny The Fact That Whatever Is The State Of The Affairs In The Country, You Did Not Have The Army Controlling The Country And You Have A Pluralistic Society Anyway.

Acknowledged Differences May Create Mutual Respect, But Hazy Misunderstandings Bring Forth Nothing But Prejudice And Rejection.

I Focus On Islamic Applied Ethics In Many Fields, And Here I Am Saying That Coming Back To The Qu'ran And The Sunnah As Our Reference Point Does Not Mean That We Depend For Our Ethics On 'islam As Opposed To The Others'.

It Is Like Using A Smoke Screen, The Same Thing For An Individual. The Topic Here Is Islam. If French Politicians Are No Longer Talking About Islam, They Know They Will Have To Talk About Something Else, Which Brings The Spotlight On Their Inefficiency. They Will Have To Talk About Domestic Social And Economic Issues And They Will Have To Justify Their Foreign Policy, Which Is Obviously Something They Need To Avoid At All Costs.

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.

An 'islamic Economy' Or 'islamic Finance' Doesn't Mean Anything To Me. But I Do Think That In The Multi-polar World, It Is Time To Find New Partners, To Find A New Balance In The Economic Order. And This Could Help You To Find An Alternative Way Forward.

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.

When I Am Talking To People From Germany, We Should Know That There Are Certain Things And Certain Histories That Are Very Important For People. If You Look At All The Muslims Living In The West, They Didn't React In A Violent Way. They Don't Like What They Saw But They Are Citizens Like You And Me And They Look At It And Say: "this Is A Silly Video But We Are Not Going To React."

The Point For Me Is People Who Are Atheists Or Are Coming From Different Religious Traditions; They Are Coming From Their Own Sources And Specific Roots. We Should Analyze These.

For Muslims, The Source Of Everything We Do Is Based In The Belief That There Is One God, And This One God Is Revealing To Us There Is One Humanity With Equal Dignity For Each, Beyond Faith, Color And Social Status. Whatever Your Status, Color, Background Or Religion, You Have The Same Dignity.

Don’t Nurture A Sense Of Guilt; Rather, Nurture A Sense Of Responsibility Married With A Sense Of Humility.

Islamism Implies Some Sort Of Political And Social Plan For Muslim People. In That Classification, We Find Different Categories. Legalist Ones, Traditional Ones And Revolutionary Ones. Some Of Them Are Revolutionary But Are Non-violent, Others Are Extremely Violent. There Are Also The Ones We Call The Literalists, Like The Egyptian Party Hizb Al-nour That Used To Be Against Democracy And Now Is Getting Into The Political Game.

We Have To Be Very Cautious Not To Accept The Scam Of Polarization We See In The Media. It Is Not In Fact Between Secularists And Islamists, It Is A Battle Within The Islamic Reference.

Islam Doesn't Need Reform, We Need To Reform The Muslim Mind.

As Muslims, We Are All Equals, We Abide By The Laws And We Understand That We Have To Be Active Citizens Wherever We Are. Our Goals Are First To Live By Our Principles, To Remind People Of These Values, To Reconcile Our Respective Societies With These Shared Universal Values And To Try Our Best To Push For A Spiritual Agenda With More Ethics In Society, In Politics, In Economics, And In Culture.

I Wouldn't Call It Naive But Silly. History Does Not Work Like This. If You Look At The Dynamics Of Eastern Europe Or Even Germany Post Reunification, You Realize That Change Takes Time. No One Can Deny The Fact That We Are Still Not There - I Am Advocating Something Which Has To Go From Uprisings To Revolutions. It Is Not Coming Straight Away That It Is Not Going To Come But What We Have To Advocate Is That The Democratization Process Is Always Better Than State Dictatorship.

We Can Think Of Solutions In Various Theoretical Ways, But It's Not So On The Ground. If They Don't Have A Reference That Helps Them To Belong, Then They Will End Up Excluding, And Through That They Get To Feel That They Belong On The Basis Of Some Narrow Identity, Language Or Color.

Cultures Are Never Merely Intellectual Constructs. They Take Form Through The Collective Intelligence And Memory, Through A Commonly Held Psychology And Emotions, Through Spiritual And Artistic Communion.

Collective Memory

Religious Symbols Should Be Visible In Public Space, In A Dignified And Non-provocative Manner. Christmas Trees Here, Jewish Menorahs There And, Further Along, A Minaret - These Symbols Represent Human Life In All Its Diversity.

The Islamic World Is Obsessed With The Notion Of Strong Leaders. This Is A Mistake. We Don't Need Powerful Leaders, But Rather Unconventional, Progressive Thinkers With The Courage To Open Our Minds.

The Turkish Road Is Not My Model Because I Am Critical Of The Way You Are Dealing With Freedom Of Expression, Of How You Are Dealing With The Treatment Of Minorities, And Your Economic Vision.

Proud To Be A Muslim Isn't A Stamp You Have On Your Heart, It's A Light You Have In Your Heart.

Terror Will Crash Down On Us If We Fail To Understand That A Pluralistic Society Requires The Personal And Daily Commitment Of Every Citizen.

We Need To Challenge The Dominant Culture: By Ethics, Principles And Values.

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