Blair says extremism within Islam can’t be ingored

Former British prime minister Tony Blair launched a scathing attack on fundamentalist Islam Sunday, writing that the West needs to admit that there is an ideological issue within the religion.

“There is a problem within Islam – from the adherents of an ideology that is a strain within Islam. And we have to put it on the table and be honest about it,” he wrote.

Blair, the Middle East Quartet’s peace envoy, recently returned from the World Economic Meeting in Jordan, where he was tasked with helping galvanize a $4 billion investment in the Palestinian economy, a move touted by US Secretary of State John Kerry as a key step toward peace.

“This strain is not the province of a few extremists. It has at its heart a view about religion and about the interaction between religion and politics that is not compatible with pluralistic, liberal, open-minded societies,” he wrote.

Blair, who’s sister-in-law converted to Islam and who told the Observer magazine in 2011 he reads the Koran every day, also praised the religion, saying that moderates were the majority, albeit not as well organized as extremists.

“There is not a problem with Islam,” he wrote. “For those of us who have studied it, there is no doubt about its true and peaceful nature. There is not a problem with Muslims in general. Most in Britain will be horrified at Lee Rigby’s murder.”

Blair is NOT saying Islam is bad, but only a minority of "extremists" "within" Islam. The same as the Obamites think the NRA and Bible totin' conservatives are extremists and as Blair wrote "It has at its heart a view about religion and about the interaction between religion and politics that is not compatible with pluralistic, liberal, open-minded societies,”...."

He's quite the ecumentist ($$$$):

Tony Blair

"A longer exploration of his faith can be found in an interview with Third Way Magazine. There he says that "I was brought up as [a Christian], but I was not in any real sense a practising one until I went to Oxford. There was an Australian priest at the same college as me who got me interested again. In a sense, it was a rediscovery of religion as something living, that was about the world around me rather than some sort of special one-to-one relationship with a remote Being on high. Suddenly I began to see its social relevance. I began to make sense of the world".[192]

"On 22 December 2007, it was disclosed that Blair, who in 1996, had been reprimanded by Cardinal Basil Hume for receiving Holy Communion at Mass despite not being a Catholic, in contravention of canon law,[199] had converted to the Catholic faith, and that it was "a private matter".[200][201] He had informed Pope Benedict XVI on 23 June 2007 that he wanted to become a Catholic. The Pope and his advisors criticised some of Blair's political actions, but followed up with a reportedly unprecedented red-carpet welcome, which included Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, who would be responsible for Blair's Catholic instruction.[202] In 2010, The Tablet named him as one of Britain’s most influential Roman Catholics.[203]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Blair#Religious_faith

John Kerry

"In an interview with Christianity Today, Kerry said of his faith: "I'm a Catholic and I practice, but at the same time I have an open-mindedness to many other expressions of spirituality that come through different religions. ... I've spent some time reading and thinking about religion and trying to study it, and I've arrived at not so much a sense of the differences, but a sense of the similarities in so many ways." He said that he believed that the Torah, the Qur'an, and the Bible all share a fundamental story which connects with readers.[21]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_kerry#Religious_beliefs

Office of the Quartet Representative - Tony Blair

"The Quartet, set up in 2002, consists of the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and Russia. Its mandate is to help mediate Middle East peace negotiations and to support Palestinian economic development and institution-building in preparation for eventual statehood."
http://www.tonyblairoffice.org/quartet/

Tony Blair Faith Foundation

"The Foundation's basic premises listed in their initial mission statement are: 1) faith is important to many, underpinning their systems of thought, their behaviour and the behaviour of many of the world's progressive movements, and that 2) the great religions share values of respect, justice and compassion. But it is also recognised that faith can be divisive, too. This is viewed by the Foundation as being based on distortions of faith rather than being intrinsic to it. Their aim is to use the tools of modern communication to "educate, inform and develop understanding" about various faiths, and the relationships between them. It aims to do this in such a way as to address global poverty and conflict.[3]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Blair_Faith_Foundation

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