The Arab Spring has heightened the ideological tension between Ankara and Tehran, and Turkey's model seems to be winning.

There are strengths in Islamic tradition. Islam actually, as a monotheistic religion, which defined man as a responsible agent by itself, created the idea of the individual in the Middle East and saved it from the communitarianism, the collectivism of the tribe.

There is a heated debate in Turkey these days over whether the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is furthering democracy or rolling it back.

It is beneficial for Turkish democracy that not all religious conservatives are united under one banner.

Seeds of faith are always within us; sometimes it takes a crisis to nourish and encourage their growth.

I know that I had not faith, unless the faith of a devil, the faith of Judas, that speculative, notional, airy shadow, which lives in the head, not in the heart. But what is this to the living, justifying faith, the faith that cleanses from sin?

I was aware of it, but I grew up in a very a-religious family. My mother never went to church, she never had any religious training or background. It was never a part of our social interaction.

Faith can make no appeal to reason or the fitness of things; its appeal is to the Word of God, and whatever is therein revealed, faith accepts as true.