Speaking in Chicago on April 22nd to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, addressed religion and politics in world affairs. The particular religion he focused on was Islam. Early in his speech, Blair stated that "fundamental Islam is the opposite of what extremists preach" and that the Qur'an, Islam's holy text, is full of progressive, humanitarian principles.

Still, the sense that he was singling out Islam was palpable. Blair noted there are jihadist extremists fighting in not only Afghanistan and Iraq but also in smaller, more remote, rarely heard of regions throughout the world. Blair further noted that jihadist extremists all have three characteristics in common: (1) they are relentless, (2) they believe they are fighting in the name of true Islam, and (3) they use terrorism to create chaos in the world.

Although Blair prefaced his comments with factual statements about Islam and the Qur'an, his remaining comments about Islam, albeit one particular interpretation, were framed in terms of war, battles and a long-term struggle. He further stated that the challenge of confronting jihadist extremists' interpretations of Islam is the responsibility of Muslims worldwide who practice true Islam. It was disconcerting to hear Islam being praised while, in almost the same breath, there was a call for a long and hard battle against it.

Blair included some questionable assumptions and wrongly called out Islam only. Furthermore, he offered no concrete solutions on how Muslims can practically challenge jihadist extremists.

In analyzing the challenges posed by jihadist extremists Blair made assumptions that were clearly self-serving in the sense that they absolved Western powers of any responsibility for creating environments that ultimately created incubators for extremism. Blair himself identified several policy blunders such as empowering the Taliban to fight the Soviets, ignoring the long-term impacts of having a generation of children educated exclusively in madarasas in rural Pakistan and supporting a dictator in Iraq to keep Iran in check. Blair pointed to these situations as mistakes in policy but still asserted that only the terrorists are responsible for terrorism.

In other words, no matter what the West has done, terrorism cannot be blamed on anyone but the terrorists. This was an applause line that delivered.

While there is no justification for terrorism, it would be wrong to ignore the socio-economic-political factors that push people towards terrorism. For example, having one's family killed in a missile strike on a residence in Gaza does not justify an aggrieved parent or sibling strapping on explosives and blowing himself up in a vegetable market in Israel. However, understanding the factors that drove the man to become a suicide bomber can help policy makers devise strategies to eliminate the underlying causes of terrorism.

Blair's speech focused entirely on Islam. Instead, what he should have focused on was extremism. Had his focus been on extremism as a global threat he would have been justified in confronting extremist interpretations of Islam. However, in order to be balanced and accurate in identifying extremism as a global threat to peace and stability, Blair should have looked at extremism in Judaism, Christianity and Hinduism too.

During his speech Blair pointed out that although the Holy Land is a very small parcel relative to other nations, a resolution to the conflict in that region is essential for creating a more peaceful world. This is probably true, and the hold up in achieving peace in the Holy Land is due in part to extremist Jewish ideology that calls for the taking of all the lands that are a part of "Greater Israel".

Blair conveniently omitted any mention of extremist Christians who are fomenting conflict in the Holy Land in order to accelerate the coming of the Messiah or of fascist Hindus in India who are actively seeking to subjugate India's Muslim and Christian minorities. Both of these two groups (extremist Christians and fascist Hindus) are as much a threat to global stability as are jihadist extremists.

Blair's speech identified six solutions to addressing the challenge of jihadist extremists. One of the solutions required Muslims globally to confront extremism within Islam from the inside. This is a good idea, because any efforts by adherents of other faiths to interpret or explain Islam to Muslims would be ill-conceived and poorly received.

But this is easier said than done. Muslims worldwide, in order to confront jihadist extremists' ideology, must have the space and the resources to put forward a countervailing understanding of what is authentic Islam.

Such a space hardly exists. So many Muslims throughout the world are refugees and are among the poorest of the poor. Afghanistan, Iraq and Somali are among the leading countries of origin of refugees.

The second largest population of Muslims in the world is in India. There are 150 million Muslims in India and they are a marginalized minority. According to a report by Carin Zississ for the Council on Foreign Relations, Muslim literacy rates in India are well below the national average while Indian Muslim poverty rates are only a tad bit higher than low-caste Hindus.

As a consequence, the best hope for combating perverse, extremist interpretations of Islam lay in the West with American and European Muslims. However, Western Muslims seem to be so preoccupied with securing their own status as equal citizens in the face of discrimination and gross civil liberties violations as a result of overreaching, overzealous and unconstitutional laws and law enforcement tactics, that there is little energy, no resources and hardly any credibility to wage such a battle.

Suggesting that Muslims must confront jihadist extremism from within Islam is not a solution. Rather, it is an objective. The solution is the amalgam of means for empowering Muslims to attain this objective.

Some of the components of this solution include: (1) halting the vitriol against and demonizing of Muslims and Islam by politicians and pundits who seek to profit from Muslim-bashing, (2) ending the civil liberties abuses that sap the Muslim communities' energies, resources and international standing and (3) enabling Muslims through concrete financial assistance to develop the mechanisms for dialogue, civic engagement and a rigorous contextual religious exegeses.

Despite the shortcomings of his speech he still dazzled some of the Muslims in the audience. What probably hooked these Muslims was the conciliatory tone Blair took towards Islam. It is such a rare thing to hear national and international leaders make such statements. These platitudes about Islam clearly beguiled some of the Muslims in the audience, but by and large, the shortcomings in Blair's policy speech were clear to those who were intent on really hearing his message.

Noone has taken the higher ground. All have acted in their personal interests. Such values discussion happens but always afterwards and only to legitimise already abhorrent actions of war and violence. So it is that attacking/critiqueing Christian and Jewish fundamentalisms attacks on the "holy land" are not at the top of this guys list and never will be and we can never expect it to be.

Secondly, we need to recognise that expecting establishment mouthpieces like the war criminal Tony Blair to somehow effect the necessary change in establishment on the rich side and the poor side of the divide is useless. The last hundred years, his own history of actions.. are all mproof of that. This has happened on both sides and will continue to happen until 'a party amongst US arises to enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong'.

The global system of economics will offer no REAL solutions. Neither will the global political powers. Neither will the current organisation of leadership. These are self-serving entities. New options need to be independent, not dependent or co-dependent. This applies as much to our clerical establishment as it does to our political establishment. If we are really Ummah, the Taliban is as much our burden as Mubaraks regime.

I have the following issues with this article.

1) War within Islam thesis:
"One of the solutions required Muslims globally to confront extremism within Islam from the inside. This is a good idea, because any efforts by adherents of other faiths to interpret or explain Islam to Muslims would be ill-conceived and poorly received."
While I agree that reform comes from within, but this “War within Islam” thesis irks me.
For a critique of this Clash within Civilizations, please refer to the following essay by Mahmood Mamdani: http://www.ssrc.org/sept11/essays/mamdani.htm
“We are now told to give serious attention to culture. It is said that culture is now a matter of life and death.

But is it really true that people’s public behavior, specifically their political behavior, can be read from their religion? Could it be that a person who takes his or her religion literally is a potential terrorist? And only someone who thinks of the text as not literal, but as metaphorical or figurative, is better suited to civic life and the tolerance it calls for?

How, one may ask, does the literal reading of religious texts translate into hijacking, murder, and terrorism?

Some may object that I am presenting a caricature of what we read in the press. After all, is there not less and less talk of the clash of civilizations, and more and more talk of the clash inside civilizations? Is that not the point of the articles I referred to earlier, those in The Spectator and The New York Times? After all, we are now told to distinguish between good Muslims and bad Muslims. Mind you, not between good and bad persons, nor between criminals and civic citizens, who both happen to be Muslims, but between good Muslims and bad Muslims.

We are told that there is a fault line running through Islam, a line that divides moderate Islam, called genuine Islam, and extremist political Islam. The terrorists of September 11, we are told, did not just hijack planes; it is said that they also hijacked Islam, meaning genuine Islam!"


2) The Savior syndrome:
You write "As a consequence, the best hope for combating perverse, extremist interpretations of Islam lay in the West with American and European Muslims."

I have heard that tone before somewhere -- the tone of people claiming to be religious saviors.

To quote Mamdani's same essay again: "The implication is that their only salvation lies, as always, in philanthropy, in being saved from the outside.

When I read this, or something like this, I wonder if this world of ours is after all divided into two: on the one hand, savages who must be saved before they destroy us all and, on the other, the civilized whose burden it is to save all?"

3) Disputed numbers:

"The second largest population of Muslims in the world is in India." This is just a minor correction but the second largest population of Muslims is Pakistan, India being the third and Indonesia being the largest Muslim population. This can be confirmed by many sources, one of them being CIA world fact book that puts Pakistan's Muslims at 165M out of a total of 175 M and India's Muslims being roughly 155M.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/pk.html

>>he offered no concrete solutions on how Muslims can practically challenge jihadist extremists.

That's not his job; its ours. Have we so declined that we cannot even practically challenge internal extremism. Ah, but the situation in Pakistan shows us that the answer is *NO*.

OmarG >>> That's not his job; its ours. Have we so declined that we cannot even practically challenge internal extremism. Ah, but the situation in Pakistan shows us that the answer is *NO*.

You're right. Its not his job to challenge extremism in our community. It is our job to challenge him when he exhascerbates/generates it and undermines our own efforts to deal with it. Its our job to give extremism a human face and not some devils face with no background and no grounds.

Salmaan >>> How, one may ask, does the literal reading of religious texts translate into hijacking, murder, and terrorism?

Its literalism, because its the application of letter of the law over spirit of the law. Its also literalism because it takes explicit injunctions of the Shariah and ignores either the background to that revelation or other contradictory revelation.

Salmaan >>> 2) The Savior syndrome: You write "As a consequence, the best hope for combating perverse, extremist interpretations of Islam lay in the West with American and European Muslims."

Its not a saviour syndrome at all. Its a matter of practical and physical reality. Muslims outside Muslim countries have the intellectual tools, resources and political framework where we can cultivate new solutions/ideas for other Muslims. That means, you're not going to be persecuted for dissent, your ideas are not going to be policed, your resources are unique and more easily mobilised.

Ghulam: "Its literalism, because its the application of letter of the law over spirit of the law. Its also literalism because it takes explicit injunctions of the Shariah and ignores either the background to that revelation or other contradictory revelation."

Yes, literalist reading of the scriptures may lead to applying harsh laws out of context without even considering if the preconditions have been met or not or even looking at how the law was applied in the yester years. Yet, I fail to see how if one reads the Quran in a literalist fashion; one can resort to terrorism of 9/11. That's like Bush & Co wanting to read the Quran to see why the terrorists did what they did instead of looking at the socio-political forces at work and the historic context of violence that that "shape the agency of the perpetrator."
To paraphrase Prof. Sherman Jackson (You can google the video of his lecture and Q/A at Stanford), if an African American Muslim blows up a KKK hideout in America and says that he did it in the name of Islam, would it be because of the literalist reading of the Quran or would you look at the historic socio-political forces at work there. Reading his motives by the perpetrator’s rhetoric is in itself a literalist reading of his motives that is utterly devoid of context.

As for your second point, Muslims outside Muslim countries have the tools available to them to formulate their religious beliefs according to the environment they are in and can hopefully add to the corpus of Islamic studies that will have an impact across national borders. People inside Muslim countries may consult the work some Western Muslims have done, but only if those in Muslim countries by their own choice consult the literature produced by Western Muslims if it appeals to their particular circumstances. But, if as you say there is intellectual repression in the Muslim countries, how would they have access to literature of dissent. Now, if you say that in today's day and age, you can access any literature no matter what the restriction, then the literature of dissent can and is also produced and disseminated from within. So, may be what is being said is that people in the Muslim countries don't really have the intelligence to think for themselves that only we Western Muslims do. If so, then that's racism, my friend.

I am not saying Western Muslims shouldn't be intellectually engaged with the worldwide Muslim community. It is the condescension that irks me, that unless Western Muslims help the savages in backward Muslim countries that are apparently populated with people with no intellect, the savages would keep on being savages. The missionary notion of "saving” and the colonial notion of the civilized saving the savages, are discomforting to say the least.

"That's not his job; its ours." Omar, shame on you.
That's such a WESTERN point of view. You do your job, and I'll do mine, and everybody will be happy.
No. Terrorism is everybody's problem, that's what the author was saying...non-muslims can and will contribute to conditions which encourage terrorism as an act.
If Muslims were just terrorising other Muslims, then it would be just our problem.

@humanitarian: Well, I for one do not quite trust Western politicians to do whats good for us; that's not how the contemporary political model works. It never has, actually no matter what civilization or era politics has been practiced in.

Anyway, I think any lasting solution has to come from within and based on the more positive aspects of our deen. I do not like outsiders trying to tell us how to practice Islam.

And, everyone doing their own job is not a purely Western concept. Me thinks the specialization of work originated in Mesopotamia or perhaps Anatolia, so its a very Middle Eastern idea, too ;-)

Salmaan >>>> I am not saying Western Muslims shouldn't be intellectually engaged with the worldwide Muslim community. It is the condescension that irks me

Word. No doubt. I agree with you one hundred percent.

OmarG >>>> Anyway, I think any lasting solution has to come from within and based on the more positive aspects of our deen. I do not like outsiders trying to tell us how to practice Islam.

You could re-define and re-imagine, cultivate and nurture new/old/humanistic ideas. But when Afghans/Iraqis/Haitians/Mexicans end up being short changed to pay for North American debt and Indonesians/Vietnamese/Brazilians live as second class human beings and practically as slaves to make nikes cheap ... how much is "revolution from within" going to help? Its as if you burden the Ummah intellectually for what is ultimately the physical burden of western democratic progress i.e for the west by the rest (of the world).

The reality of human history and our sociology is and always has been that people in those circumstances make their sons work and marry their daughters at younger ages. American have antagonised that into an Afghan orthodoxy. You can't blame a society for reacting when being provoked. You need to educate your fellow Americans that 9/11 was NOT a provocation, it was a reaction. Don't you think Americas need to change is as urgent if not more urgent than these people in Swat?

You undermine Muslims and undervalue our civility and humanity. There are definitely two sides to the coin .. 1.) developing ourselves and 2.) preventing others from undermining that development.

In other words, no matter what the West has done, terrorism cannot be blamed on anyone but the terrorists. This was an applause line that delivered.>>>

Of course! Because to acknowledge that your actions contributed to or in some cases completely created the problem requires that you both admit that what you have done is wrong .... and more importantly ... that you're not going to do it anymore. The US's "policies" and "interests" ... my, what nice soft clean businesslike words those are, are nothing more than thin disguises for imperialism. I can't ever see the US, or the companies that make up much of the real power behind the US, ever standing down from that "interest." What disgusts me is the American public that has been broken and sent to financial ruin by corporations moving their operations overseas and using less expensive labor and so butting the bowels out of the American working machine, well those Americans still get all hot and bothered over "our interests" when the "our" in that equation isn't "them" and those interests are putting their children in tent cities all over the US and ensuring that theu die because of lack of healthcare because they have been trained like Pahvlov's dogs that healthcare reforms is SOCIALISM ..... whatever that is.

While you fume your standard, boilerplate anti US fumes, very similar to what the communists used to spew, numberless children get up to gabble arabic syllables meaningless to them, and receive no practical instruction in anything.

In Pakistan the order has gone out to evacuate Swat.

Eliza >>> While you fume your standard, boilerplate anti US fumes, very similar to what the communists used to spew, numberless children get up to gabble arabic syllables meaningless to them...

Cultivating the spirit of faith, common decency and respect, the traditions that have served humanity and them .. that would be meaningless to you. Its not as if being literate has served you in being honest or fair.

Its all rich coming now. Communist babble is not venting when proved true by trillion dollar failures and bailouts of defunct motor companies, and the US doing the same in Afghanistan what the Russians did twenty years ago! What was that ... 60,000 americans losing homes every month? And all you can pronounce now is "boilerplate anti-US fumes" without a hint of critical thought.

>>> In Pakistan the order has gone out to evacuate Swat.

Why ... are US troops landing? You do realise that the SWAT mess is an offshoot of the war in Afghanistan. Another mess created outside that needs to be cleaned up with the blood of the gabbling children of another country.

Imperialists will be imperialists. CNN now will broadcast the emotional entertainment value and Eliza will sop it up like the sadist that she is giving little notice to the causes or indicting their government. All while claiming to be civilised and the guns for this fallout are made in her neighbouring state (or at least the payments go that way)

All I have been doing is pointing out that there is a lot of neglect going on in muslim societies, and that it may have a role in the present chaos. This has called forth goofy, abusive, and standard diatribes against myself and the US.

Yes, let's quit all aid programs. They just create parasites. By all means everybody get out of Iraq.

Swat is being evacuated as well you know, because murderous knuckleheads wearing a hat of religion are running amok over the citizenry.
Just cultivating the spirit of faith, common decency and respect...

Check out this research paper for context on Swat.
http://www.ipcs.org/search_result.php?keyword=Swat+A+Critical+Analysis+

Thank you for the link, Salmaan.

U r welcome.

You might see value in this article as well:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/email/who-are-the-taliban-in-swat
by Humeira Iqtidar

>>> All I have been doing is pointing out that there is a lot of neglect going on in muslim societies, and that it may have a role in the present chaos.

My apologies if I've insulted you. I don't think that I have. Feel free to point them out. I think that challenging you on your opinions is necessary because they paint a false picture of situation, based mostly on your own misinformation. And you've run pretty thick with the insulting pompous attitude yourself.

You've hardly even attempted to deal with your extremist views or be as morally forthright as you expect others to be. What "neglect"? Are you saying that Afghans (talib or rural or otherwise) don't want progress and don't try to live a noble and meaningful life? Yet more questions that have very little bearing on you, who seems to have taken to pointing out everyone elses failures. Your opinions in this light are as good a Nazi who criticises camp inmates for being dirty and committing theft.

>>>> Swat is being evacuated as well you know, because murderous knuckleheads wearing a hat of religion are running amok over the citizenry.

That is not the reason that SWAT is being evacuated. SWAT is being evacuated because the region has been handed over to a local government that sympathises with the Taliban (as well they should ~ they are the same abandoned people). At the same time, US president Obama has escalated his fight against "terror". He now approaches the vulnerable civil government of greater Pakistan with $12Billion carrot and a sanctions threat.

As a result, the government has to find a way to undermine its agreement with the local government and subsequently engages in armed conflict, with the $12 military aid received from the US during Musharrafs reign. Just this week, the US military has killed over 120 civilians in western afghanistan. Neglect seems to be very much their lot.

Ghulam, I have been reading that muslims have been doing this tyrants imposing shariah thing to themselves for centuries.

You use the phrase "abandoned people" this could mean people who have abandoned morality or people who have been abandoned by society.
The second meaning is valid here I think. Instead of getting tradesmen's certificates or academic degrees, or starting businesses, young men rot and explode.

Suppose a party of armed men comes to your house and tells you your trousers don't meet their specs. You say there is no trouser spec in Islam.
They come back next day, your pants still aren't right, they shoot you and your father for good measure, and string you up on display in public square.

Your mother, wife, and younger siblings get to see all this.

I was going to give a long detailed response to your obviously disinterested response, but it soon occurred to me .. you don't care about the truth. You want that emotional appeal of a CNN broadcast, that yankee doodle anthem and apologies and admissions of savagery from Muslims. So here's some emotional arguments for your consideration. Actually reading

Suppose your father died fighting the Russians but at least you're certain of his status as a martyr because he fought communists and was supported by the United States. Suppose this United States abandoned your country after this war and it fell into disarray thereafter as the Russian withdrawal did not mean an end to Russian Support for their allied supporters. Suppose your sister is gang-raped by former "mujahideen" who killed your father for not supporting the communist occupation and who are now peddling heroin to the US and Europe using arms from their former supporters, the US and Russia to destabilise the government. There is no economy/infrastructure to speak of and your country is heavily mined and you yourself never had that luxury of an 8th grade education.

Suppose then that a group of young and ambitious men, actually overthrow the local warlord and try and convict him, restore basic services but insist on a strict public moral code of conduct. They also actively seek support from you to demine the country and fight the warlords in the north. Your ancestral smallholding in a remote part of Afghanistan is sufficient for your families survival but not its progress. Suppose America invades your country to take away this government that has restored order to supplant an oil executive as president who promptly hands the contract for a strategic pipeline to his former colleagues (who incidentally lost their contract to Chinese contractors when the Afghans were in power).

Suppose your only hope for your 15 year old sister is marriage but she happens to die when the US bombs her wedding party along with half of your and the in-law family. Suppose you're told your grief doesn't count because your crime is being muslim and your values are not condusive a better modern world, that never actually supported your progress in the first place. Suppose after all of your suffering, some white girl in alabama says you had given up an edcuation to rot and explode.

You know nothing about the civilising force of Islam. You have absolutely no clue at about how enabling Islamic education is, even in a Madrassah environment and how it goes beyond propoganda and encourages learning and growth. Your ideas are based on trumped up fears and emotional attachments that in the end make your countries greed legitimate, and secure your lifestyle. Yours is the country that bombs mosques, schools, union offices and wedding parties. Today you want to accuse these men of "rotting and exploding"? Salman and I could give you link after link of real world truth (not these imagined stories of excesses). An American soldier commits rape, might get a trial if his superiors don't cover it up and if he does, and when he does the trial immediately clears everyone else in his unit of wrong doing and is treated for PTSD. A Afghan ytouth picks up his fathers gun and is immediately labelled a savage terrorist wanting to rot and explode.

You are about as ingenuous Jerry Springer and peddle truth for emotional outbursts all while insulting a religion thats known more civilisations than your small expansionist country that killed 60 million native americans and enslaved 20 million Africans to proudly declare itself the leader of the western world. Why can you not accept that the situation is more complex than your inane antagonism towards the religion and that the politics has more to do with the current state of affairs than anything else?

As your little brother watches your corpse twist slowly on its rope, does he say "Mm, love that Islam?"

Does your pregnant widow tell your son when he is born, "your father died for his pants?"

There is a tangle of politics and religion going on that you and I are not going to solve by comparing apples and oranges here.

Occasionally the Grand Wizard would make a public statement that the Klan was not a violent org, its members were not arrested for violent acts. This was true, the klan usually hired outside men to do their wet work. The vast majority of klansmen never hurt anyone. They never fooled anyone, either.

If religion were not involved it might be seen as a classic situation of large masses of ignorant, neglected people, manipulated by religious/political leaders, rising up to clobber the rest of society.