Islam & extremismTony Blair: Many Muslims support Islamic extremists' ideology

Tony Blair has warned that the ideology which drives Islamic extremists has significant support from Muslims around the world.

Blair said that unless religious prejudice in Muslim communities is rooted out, the threat from the extremists will not be defeated.

Blair, speaking at the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York City, said that while the number of people engaging in violence by joining groups like Islamic State is relatively small, many of their views are widely shared.

“The conspiracy theories which illuminate much of the jihadi writings have significant support even amongst parts of the mainstream population of some Muslim countries,” he said.

“There are millions of schoolchildren every day in countries round the world — not just in the Middle East — who are taught a view of the world and of their religion which is narrow-minded, prejudicial and therefore, in the context of a globalized world, dangerous.”

The Guardian reports that Blair acknowledged that attacking ideas which resonate in parts of mainstream Muslim society could be construed as an attack on Muslims rather than just extremists, but he said such concerns have to be overcome.

“If large numbers of people really do believe that the desire of the USA or the West is to disrespect or oppress Islam, then it is not surprising that some find recourse to violence acceptable in order to reassert the ‘dignity’ of the oppressed,” he said.

“If young people are educated that Jews are evil or that anyone who holds a different view of religion is an enemy, it is obvious that this prejudice will give rise, in certain circumstances, to action in accordance with it.

“The reality is that in parts of the Muslim community a discourse has grown up which is profoundly hostile to peaceful coexistence. Countering this is an essential part of fighting extremism.”

On Tuesday Blair also spoke to CNN after the release of the report Inside the Jihadi Mind: Understanding Ideology and Propaganda. The report, funded by The Centre on Religion and Geopolitics — an initiative of Blair’sTony Blair Faith Foundation — analyzed propaganda from ISIS, al Qaeda, and al-Nusra Front over the last two years.

“There’s no point in just tackling the violence unless you tackle the ideology of extremism behind the violence,” Blair said.

“You’ve got these broad ideological strands that lie behind a lot of this extremism. If you take, for example, some of the organizations in the Middle East, some of those clerics that are putting out the most extreme stuff — they’ll have Twitter followings that go into millions of people.

“These people are saying things about Jewish people — about even those in their own religion who are different that we would regard as completely unacceptable — and it’s those waters of extremism in which the violent extremists can swim,” he said.

“The majority of people within Islam do not support either the violence or the ideology. What we are talking about, however, is a radical Islamist way of thinking that results in extremism by small numbers of people, but that thinking is shared by larger numbers of people, and you’ve got to attack both — the violence and the extremism, the thinking behind it,” Blair said.

CNN notes that Blair said that the educational systems in countries where extremism had taken hold must be overhauled.

“We’ve got to use our negotiating power and might with these countries to say, ‘You’re going to have to reform the education systems that are educating millions of young people day in and day out to a view of the world that’s narrow-minded, bigoted and hostile to those who are different.’ ”

— Read more in Emman El-Badawy et al., Inside the Jihadi Mind: Understanding Ideology and Propaganda (Tony Blair Faith Foundation, October 2015)