This is Tony Blair at his fudging best! He fails to identify the true nature of Islam. No amount of cosmetics can change Islam’s nature. Fourteen hundred years has failed to change it; and neither he nor King Abdullah are going to change its true nature either. Not now, not ever!
He should understand by now that Islam is a complete way of life: Politics and religion form one integrated whole. It is fundamentally at odds with democracy. And no amount of sweet talk from either side will change this.
Recently, Gordon Brown went cap in hand to the Saudis for help to bail out the ailing and infirm Western economies. Any aid that may be forthcoming will come with strings attached. Those strings will be in the form of assistance in the promotion of Islam in the West, and more and more concessions. Further, the Saudis, and other Muslim leaders, are bound to try and silence all forms of criticism of Islam and the Prophet Muhammad in the West. Just wait and see what the near future will bring!
Tony Blair when he was in Number 10 appeased Muslims both at home and abroad. In so doing, he did a disservice to his fellow countrymen in particular, and to Westerners in general. It would appear that he is still peddling the same nonsense. But should we be surprised? Leopards never change their spots. - ©Mark
INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE: The decision by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to hold an interfaith conference under the auspices of the United Nations is bold, courageous and potentially far-reaching.
To many people, especially in the West, his initiative may seem unremarkable. In fact, it is a major step forward in the long march to a relationship between Islam and other faiths that is not one of confrontation or distrust but of peaceful co-existence.
King Abdullah is not only the ruler of Saudi Arabia. He is the keeper of the two Holy Mosques, the religious sites at Mecca and Medina which, together with Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem, constitute three of the leading holy places of Islam. He is also the leader of a nation that critics say has been slow to modernize, with fraught consequences for the rest of the world. But King Abdullah's decision to offer the hand of friendship and mutual respect to other religions by initiating the conference, which began Wednesday, has big implications - as the criticism of his initiative from some corners of the Islamic world indicates.
Within Islam today, there are two competing narratives. There is not a series of different trouble spots or issues that require disconnected focus and action. There is essentially one struggle, with two sides.
On the one hand, there are those who loudly declare that Islam has gone wrong precisely because its leadership has been prepared to work with the West, or because the West has sought to impose its values on Muslim societies. According to this narrative, Islam is engaged in a fundamental conflict with nonbelievers. There can be no reconciliation. Those who seek it betray Islam. Confrontation, or at least segregation, is inevitable. Instead of pursuing co-existence, instead of "diluting" the purity of Islam by trying to learn about and respect others of a different faith, Muslims should re-establish a mythical caliphate, an Islamic state in which governance is regulated by a rigid adherence to Islamic law and practice of centuries ago, as interpreted by today's hard-line clerics.
Though the number of believers who use this narrative as a route into extremism or violence is small, there are many more who buy its essential premise that we are two distinct cultures and civilizations in opposition to each other. They are encouraged in this belief because such a narrative plays to the more widespread feeling that Islam is treated disrespectfully by the West, that double standards apply in the handling of the Palestinian issue, and that the military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq were religiously motivated. Their appeal is sometimes falsely enhanced by a sense that the West has lost touch with basic moral values.
The second group does not desire to replicate Western society. Its proponents share concerns of a moral nature. But they also want to assemble a modern narrative about Islam and have started to do so. They know that the modern world cannot function unless people of different faiths learn to understand and respect one another. This narrative is absolutely founded in Islam, but it is engaged in trying to root out the exclusivist view of religion - not unique in Islam - as a means of shutting the door on those who follow a different faith.
It is the proponents of this modern narrative who want to use the Middle East's wealth to support a politics and culture in tune with the 21st century. They seek to draw on Islam's core belief in education as a means of ensuring that their people are enabled to become a distinctive part of the 21st century world but not distinct from it. And they point to a millennium of Islamic history, from Spain to China, which illustrates Muslim co-existence and acceptance of other faith communities.
Saudi Arabia is seen by many as home to those who espouse the first narrative. King Abdullah is showing how his country can and should be part of the second, that of peaceful co-existence.
This has important policy lessons for the West, especially with the advent of a new U.S. president. Those championing the outward-looking and peaceful view of Islam need our support. >>> Tony Blair | November 12, 2008
INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE: Saudi Arabia, Missing Pluralism at Home, Seeks UN Platform to Promote It Abroad
UNITED NATIONS: Saudi Arabia, which deploys a special police force to ensure that a narrow sect of Islam predominates in the kingdom, is sponsoring a discussion at the United Nations on religious tolerance starting Wednesday.
More than a dozen world leaders are scheduled to attend the meeting, including President George W. Bush; the British prime minister, Gordon Brown; the Israeli president, Shimon Peres; and the heads of seven Arab states. King Abdullah, the Saudi monarch, and Peres were both expected as guests of Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general, at a dinner Tuesday night, a rare chance for an encounter.
The United Nations avoids religious discussions, so the two-day session of the General Assembly is officially being labeled as a meeting about the "culture of peace." Most of those attending are political rather than religious figures.
But human rights groups are crying foul that Saudi Arabia is being given a platform to promote religious tolerance abroad while actively combating it at home.
"It's like apartheid South Africa having a conference at the UN on racial harmony," said Ali al-Ahmed, a Shiite Muslim dissident from Saudi Arabia based in Washington.
Human Rights Watch issued a statement calling on Saudi Arabia to start the fight against religious intolerance at home by ending "systemic religious discrimination." >>>
By Neil Macfarquhar | November 12, 2008
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