We respect every religion. Everyone is free to practice his religion freely... In the Tunisian parliament, we have even Jews.

I've always maintained there is no incompatibility between Islam and democracy. The Europeans in general confuse Islam and Islamism. Islamism is a political movement that instrumentalises the religion to get to power, which has nothing to do with religion. Islam here in Tunisia is a religion of openness, of tolerance.

The democratic process is always vulnerable and threatened by terrorists, by parties that do not believe in democracy.

To fight extremism, we will need to pursue a two-pronged strategy: both 'hard,' through stricter control of our borders and a more robust and technologically advanced security response, and 'soft,' based on better intelligence-gathering, working to return our mosques to their spiritual function and barring entry to foreign preachers.

When you are a politician, it means to work for the benefit of the country, not to stay home. In politics, it ends only when one dies.

There is no future for Tunisia without consensus among political parties and members of civil society.