The great British scientist Isaac Newton remarked that if he was able to see further than his predecessors, it was because he stood on the shoulders of giants. Among those giants who made possible the scientific revolution in Europe were Ibn Sina, whose 'Canon of Medicine' was a standard text for five hundred years; al-Idrisi, the geographer;

Well I think the reflection in the media in the Western world of what is called ‘Islam' is perhaps a reflection of a misnomer. Because Islam is the name of a faith, it's not the name of a country or a geographic area or a number of countries, and therefore what goes under the word Islam really should be considered a faith.

And while the notion is one I fully support, democracies don't run themselves - people run them. And my sense is that in many, many countries the sorts of human capabilities that are necessary to make democracies function, in their multiple forms, are not there. There is a tendency to use democracy as a generic term, but it isn't. There are so many different forms of democracy.

We are living in a time of vacuum, we are living in a time of search, and I do not believe that it is wealth, or military power, that will bring the Muslim world back to what you and other Muslims and I aspire for it to be. What will bring it back? Only one thing, the quality and the capability of the people of the Muslim world