For religions to be about peace requires many things: we need to appreciate that religious consciousness, spirituality, or belief is a force for good… - Azza Karam

Political leadership and religious leadership have to be seen as unique and distinct, when there is too much of an overlap between the political institutions and the religious institutions, it doesn’t become so much about faith anymore for the religious—it becomes more about power politics.

It is seriously myopic to assume that the Muslim Brotherhood is “anti-women.” I first started studying the Brotherhood, as part of a range of Islamist formations around the world, back in the late 1980s. Even within the organization itself, there are diverse perspectives on women’s rights: there are extremely active, very well-educated, cultured, and articulate women members of the Brotherhood, just as there are some members who are deeply conservative when it comes to women’s roles in public.

This generation is growing up at a time when even what it is to be a man or a woman is being radically redefined.