“Wishful thinking about the peaceful tolerance of Islam cannot interpret away this reality: hands are still cut off, women still stoned and enslaved, just as the Prophet Muhammad decided centuries ago.”

Remarks by el-Sisi during celebrating the night of El-Kadr on 25 July 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6d_ln9MQHk. <br class="br">2014

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

Opening Keynote Address at NGO Forum on Women, Beijing China (1995)
Context: For millennia women have dedicated themselves almost exclusively to the task of nurturing, protecting and caring for the young and the old, striving for the conditions of peace that favour life as a whole. To this can be added the fact that, to the best of my knowledge, no war was ever started by women. But it is women and children who have always suffered most in situations of conflict. Now that we are gaining control of the primary historical role imposed on us of sustaining life in the context of the home and family, it is time to apply in the arena of the world the wisdom and experience thus gained in activities of peace over so many thousands of years. The education and empowerment of women throughout the world cannot fail to result in a more caring, tolerant, just and peaceful life for all.

&quot;Time To Unmask Muhammad&quot;, The Brussels Journal (30 March 2011) http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/4714 <br class="br">2010s

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "The Land Ethic", p. 209.

Source: Terror unrelated to Islam, Turkey’s top cleric says (April 10, 2016) https://www.aa.com.tr/en/turkey/terror-unrelated-to-islam-turkey-s-top-cleric-says/552678

Source: もののけ姫 [Mononoke hime]

On the role of beauty in poetry in “Poetry is Built for Compassion: An Interview with Juan Felipe Herrera” https://thi.ucsc.edu/poetry-built-compassion-interview-juan-felipe-herrera/ (Humanities Institute, UC Santa Cruz; 2019 Feb 27)

On various concerns about writing his song "The Veil", and reactions to it.
Beating the drums of hope and faith (2004)
Context: We spend so much time defending the Qur’an from attacks that it’s sexist, we rant and rave about how Islam gave rights to women over 1400 years ago, but our sisters are still not in position of leadership within our community. Our sisters are still praying next to the shoe-racks while the men have plush carpets beneath their lazy foreheads and our public women’s shelters are full of Muslim women fleeing from abusive husbands and dead-beat dads. The sad reality is that our community does display sexist attitudes to women. Writing a song about Hijab seemed pretty shallow to me in light of the other issues surrounding women that we Muslims are too self-righteous to face. … I began to see that some Muslim women look down on others for not covering, or that many Muslim men judge sisters who wear hijab differently from those who don’t. A sister shows up at the mosque one day without hijab and she is treated rudely; she shows up the next day with hijab and she is treated like a queen. Such a scenario is a blatant treatment of the woman as an object, no different than the judgements we see made in secular society of women’s appearances. In the end, it is not about the piece of cloth. It is about the relationship with God, and I know I don’t want anybody judging me so I don’t think it is right for us to judge each other.