Today, the Muslim world is injured and corrupt. People who are the enemies of all Muslims are trying to cause disunity in the Islamic world by intensifying ethnic difference and separating people under names such as 'Shia and Sunni', 'Arabs and non-Arabs'.
To move any regime you need to have co-operation and co-ordination between Kurds, Shia Arabs, Sunni Arabs, the people and the army. Until we have this we cannot change the regime.
There are a lot of Arabs that are not Muslims. They are Christians; they are Jews. Muslim Arabs, especially in my family, are just so ecstatic that I get to play Jesus. They're so proud.
The central problem in Syria is that Sunni Arabs will not be willing partners against the Islamic State unless we commit to protect them and the broader Syrian population against all enemies, not just ISIS.
What I hope to do in the States is to break up this stereotyping of Muslims and Arabs. I mean, we are basically the only sub-culture that is not represented in Hollywood. And it's funny because everybody is talking about the Muslim world and the Arab world, and we are not represented.
All dignified people in the world, whether Arabs or Muslims or others with dignity, are very proud of the speech made by president Bashar al-Assad a few days ago here in Damascus. For me he is the last Arab ruler, and Syria is the last Arab country. It is the fortress of the remaining dignity of the Arabs, and that's why I'm proud to be here.
Muslim brothers be damned; they're our greatest enemies. You know yourself that I'm a Muslim, even a fanatical Muslim. But that does nothing to alter my opinion of the Arabs.
So the idea that you could put Kurds, Shiite Arabs, and Sunni Arabs in a nice, liberal, federal system in Iraq in a short amount of time, six months or a year, boggles the mind.
Certain Gulf Arabs support proxy jihadist Sunni groups such as al Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, while Iran supports Shia militant forces such as Hezbollah.
American public opinion sees Arabs as terrorists and has the desert-man image about them. I wish the Americans would see Arabs and Muslims the way I see them... but Arabs are losing the public relations battle in the United States.
If you look in the Muslim World right now, the Shia, the Sunni Muslims are standing at the brink of a pit of fire started by Western intervention and influence in pitting them against each other by exploiting their divisions. So the stage is set for war in that area of the world that would destroy that area as completely as what they are calling the failed state Libya making Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq failed states.
Let me begin by saying that we have to understand who ISIS is. ISIS is a radical Sunni group. They cannot just be defeated through air strikes. Air strikes are a key component of defeating them, but they must be defeated on the ground by a ground force. And that ground force must be primarily made up of Sunni Arabs themselves, Sunni Arabs that reject them ideologically and confront them militarily.
[A conflict of Sunni vs. Shia] is in the mind of the Saudis, and this is in the minds of the Wahabists.
[The Iranians] actually what they are doing is the opposite. They tried to open channels with the Saudi, with many other Islamic entities in the region in order to talk about Islamic society, not Sunni and Shi'ite societies.
As we used to say when I was privileged to be the commander there, Nineveh province has the most diverse human terrain in all of Iraq - Sunni Arab majority to be sure, but also Shia Arabs, numerous Kurdish communities, and they are broken out into several different political parties.
The Arabs are victims. You have Shia Arabs, under Arabization under Saddam Hussein, who were forcibly moved up there... You have Kurds who were displaced by these Arabs that were moved up there by Saddam Hussein. Kurds have been displaced from Kirkuk for hundreds of years.
Religious distinctions are deeply important for many of the problems in today's Middle East, particularly between Sunni and Shia Muslims in Syria and Iraq.
The eradication of the Muslim Brotherhood is nothing less than an abolition of democracy and a guarantee that Arabs will continue living under authoritarian and corrupt regimes.