“It’s not religious war, but Al-Qaeda always use religions, Islam – actually, as a pretext and as a cover and as a mantle for their war and for their terrorism and for their killing and beheading and so on.”

Almost all countries have natural dividing lines, and when ethnic and religious partition occurs in one country, it’ll soon happen elsewhere.

It should be known that Israel is based on treachery.

You have different parties, different factions, you have different ideologies ; you have everything in Middle East region now.

My country and me, we are part of this region, we’re not separated. We cannot discuss it as Syria or as me ; it should be as part, as a whole, as comprehensive. That’s how we have to look at it.

In the eighties, we asked for international coalition against terrorism after the Muslim Brotherhood crisis in Syria when they started killing, of course they were defeated at that time. We asked for the same thing. So, this is a long-term policy that we base our policy on for years now.

We are facing an external attack against us, which is more dangerous than any other previous wars… We are dealing with those who are extremists, who only know the language of killing and criminality.

You in Lebanon, your power is no match to Israel. Israel, militarily, is more powerful than you and maybe it is more powerful than all the Arab countries, or most of them.

[Enemies of Syria] are the enemies of the people and the enemies of God. And the enemies of God will go to hell.

The American officials should learn to deal with reality. Why did the United States fail in most of its wars ? Because it always based its wars on the wrong information. So, whether they believe or not, this is not reality.

This is the Middle East, where every week you have something new; so whatever you talk about this week will not be valuable next week.

Israel does not care about the international public opinion.

Revolution should be Syrian, cannot be revolution imported from abroad.

Its not about learning to trust. Its about learning what it is I place my trust in and why. Its like learning to see the forest for the trees. You cannot see the forest for the trees unless you are outside the forest.

In the end a lie is a lie.

When they don’t have support within their country, they couldn’t continue more than – how many weeks ? – three weeks. So, the only reason we stand here for two years and a half is because we have internal support, public support.

Today, the Iraqi citizen sees that America is coming and wants to occupy his country and kill him, and he is willing to experience for himself what happened in Palestine.

I believe that the dysfunctional Muslim family constitutes a real threat to the very fabric of western life. It is in the family that children are groomed to practise, promote and pass on the norms of their parents’ culture.

The demand that Islam makes of women is to not attract attention to yourself, and if you are in a secular society, that attire does exactly that, and it is a political symbol, no longer religious.

I wanted secular, non-Muslim people to stop kidding themselves that Islam is peace and tolerance.

Islam is not a race. Islam is simply a set of beliefs, and it is not ‘Islamophobic’ to say Islam is incompatible with liberal democracy.

We who don’t want radical Islam to spread must compete with the agents of radical Islam. I want to see what would happen if Christians, feminists and Enlightenment thinkers were to start proselytizing in the Muslim community.

My friend, the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, was murdered in 2004 for having been insufficiently reverent toward Islam.

I have had to pay a price for leaving Islam and for speaking out. I have to pay for round-the-clock security because of the death threats against me.

I don’t believe there is such a thing as ‘moderate Islam.’ I think it’s better to talk about degrees of belief and degrees of practice.