There's a problem within Islam , says Tony Blair

There's a problem within Islam, says Tony Blair. He should know. He helped create it


By Damian ThompsonReligionLast updated: June 2nd, 2013
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Blair: bit late in the day to see the light (Photo: EPA)
There's a problem "within Islam" that the Government needs to address, says Tony Blair. Perhaps I'm being unfair, but it's as if Neville Chamberlain had revealed in 1940 that there was a problem with some of these German nationalists and what was Mr Churchill going to do about it?
This is what sticks in my throat. For many years there has been a spectrum of Muslim belief in this country ranging from unobtrusive Islamic observance to terrorist totalitarianism. The "problem" is that young British Muslims, some of them converts, are even now being propelled towards the terrorist end of the spectrum by preachers who embedded themselves here under the government of Tony Blair. Academics close to the New Labour project emitted flatulent platitudes while universities threw open their facilities to repulsive demagogues; prisons became recruiting grounds for extremists while their simpering chaplains said nothing; meanwhile, Blair's ministers and their courtiers in the police poured countless millions of pounds into subsidising some of the very Islamists whose influence they needed to contain.
Please, Mr Blair, return to the Middle East, where your mission as a "peace envoy" is yielding what might politely be described as modest results. You've done enough damage here.

Tags: Islam, tony blair, woolwich