I am going to tell you, although Islam has encountered so many woes, Islam has never done wrong to other counties. In history, Islam showed a toleran… - Ahmad ibn Billah

Immediately after independence, I was associated with all those who, in the world, themselves undertook the struggle to liberate their own country. It was thus this phase in the fight for national liberty that I participated completely. In Tunisia, in Morocco, in Vietnam, Algeria has become somewhat like the "mother of freedom struggles"; to support them was thus for us a sacred mark. When someone came to ask us for help, it was sacred. We did not even think twice. We helped them, even if we had only meagre means; we offered them arms, a little bit of money, and in occasion, men.

I myself, speaking as a man of the south, note that something has changed in the north, which is a very important point to raise. What changed exactly in this so-called advanced region of the north: that we have made a war, we have colonised, that we have done terrible things, and that there is today an opinion that is expressed, that there are young people who say "enough." This indicates that this perverse global system does not strike only the south but also the north. In the past, we spoke of poverty, misery only in the south. Now there is a lot of misery, a lot of bad that creates victims in the north as well. This has become manifest: the global system was not made to serve the good of all, but to serve multinational companies.

I was always religious but I feel it more today because our epoch demands it. Keep in mind that Islam played a big role in the liberation of Algeria. I’m no Mullah, but I am a progressive Moslem. In that respect I am two times of the Left. Progressive Moslem culture offers a solution to many problems of the Third World. For example, it forbids usury and the hoarding of supplies and favors the circulation of surplus. That basic aspect of Islamic economics responds to the situation in the Third World. Even reactionary Islamic countries give much aid to needy countries.