Blair sees the real power in faith

LEAVING religion out of debates is a recipe for disaster, the former PM says.

Tony Blair

FORMER British prime minister Tony Blair has a different and challenging view of the 21st century: he argues that religion will replace the clash of political ideologies as the dominant issue of the coming age.

Blair's further message is that the growing aggressive secularism in the West is the wrong response. It misreads and misconceives the nature of the 21st century and the best path to social harmony in a more globalised world.

An unusual mixture, Blair is a champion of both hard and soft power. Indeed, he thinks both are essential.

He warns that the struggle against a violent Islamist minority symbolised by the 9/11 attack on the US a decade ago is ongoing and unresolved.

He fears that the West misunderstands how to wage this struggle -- that it requires both fortitude and an embracing attitude towards faith and religion.

Blair, a youthful 58 and three-time elected British Labour PM, now divides his time between his responsibilities as Middle East peace envoy (he has made 67 separate visits to the Middle East since leaving office) and the Tony Blair Faith Foundation focusing on the interaction between faith and globalisation.

"In some ways I'm more interested in religion than I am in politics," Blair tells me during an interview after his arrival in Australia.

In Perth he will attend a seminar at the University of Western Australia that offers courses with Blair's foundation.

Blair's view on faith and politics sharply contradicts the contemporary Western trend now so apparent in the Australian Labor Party's increasingly disastrous move to sever itself from the Christian tradition -- a separation that even an atheist such as Julia Gillard recognises as a major political blunder.

"Some years ago people thought that religion was on the decline and that inevitably as societies developed they became more secular," Blair says. "Actually, this is not what's happening. What's happening, in fact, is that around the world religion is on the rise and that's not just in the anticipated places.

"For example, the fastest growing part of the world for Christianity is China. You've got major evangelical movements starting in Latin America and obviously you've got the expansion of Islam; there will be a doubling of the Arab population over the next 30 years.

"So religious faith is important and it's growing. Yet at the same time globalisation is throwing everyone together."

This leads Blair to his intellectual conclusion and current career preoccupation. "The issue is this: if faith is becoming a badge of identity and it says: 'I am what I am in opposition to you', then that's when religion is dangerous.

"If, on the other hand, faith becomes a humanising and civilising set of values it can play an important role in making globalisation work."

For Blair, the fashionable Western idea that religion can be suppressed or confined to the private realm is a delusion and dangerous because it misreads the main issue, which is the character and role of faith and religion in coming decades.

"We in the West tend to see people of religious faith as people to be pushed to one side," Blair says. "That quite aggressive secularism you see in the West does not understand what is happening in the rest of the world. And even in our society where organised religion is in decline in certain areas, but not all areas, the yearning for spiritual fulfilment is still very strong.

"For example, you can't understand a society like the US without understanding the importance of religion."

He points to the recent Arab Spring to illustrate his argument. There are two movements under way -- the push for democracy yet growing religious intensity.

"If you look at the Middle East at the moment there is this move towards democracy, but there is also Islamisation with the persecution of Christian and other minorities and other religious sects."

He has previously argued that in many Arab and Muslim nations "there was more tolerance and less religiosity in the 1960s" than today.

A powerful trend in Islam has been the pushing aside of moderate clerics and thinkers and the embrace of hardline dogma.

Blair warns that across Europe there is a "strong reaction" to Islamisation and "some of that finds its way into appalling extremism and sectarianism".

He attributes the high profile of immigration in many European elections to the depth of tensions over Islam, religion and culture.

"I would say that all over Europe this is an issue," Blair says.

Asked about the massacre in Norway by a right-wing extremist ideologue, he says: "I put it this way. It is an isolated act by a fanatic.

"At the same time -- if we are far-sighted about it -- we'll see that in an era of globalisation where societies are undergoing profound changes, you are bound to have this potential for conflict.

"The ideology that gives rise to such an act of brutality is an ideology that is centred around this notion of feeling under cultural attack."

He hammers the need to manage the rise of religious faith and the consequences of its mismanagement with the risk of resulting violence.

"There is a real risk," he says. "And I think it is the most substantial risk we face."

Blair brings a strategic clarity to the confusion within the West about extremist Islamist ideology and resort to violence.

"The threat we saw that culminated on 9/11 is still with us. It is still claiming thousands of lives every year.

"But more importantly it is causing great tensions within the Arab world and the Middle East and also between Islam and the West.

"I think it is unresolved. The key to resolving it is, in fact, openly and clearly to provide means by which peoples of different faiths come together and interact with one another."

For Blair, the West must be prepared to fight for its values and deploy hard power when required. These values of "sensible, decent democracy" are the same values that most Muslims want for their own societies.

He fears, however, the West suffers from an internal crisis of confidence.

"Partly as a result of fatigue and partly as a result of the financial crisis I worry as to whether we have the staying power and stamina to see this battle through."

Because the struggle is against an extremist ideology it must be met by a soft power strategy in terms of the battle of ideas. Again, this will be a prolonged task.

In countries such as Australia and Britain, where most people do integrate, the problem is "within a specific group within Islam", not the wider Islamic community.

Asked about the key to successful integration, Blair says: "To insist on diversity but also to insist upon a common space, common values and common practices.

"So in the UK you come in, we expect you to learn English, we expect you to be democratic, to treat women equal to men.

"That's what we're about as a society. I think that common space or common values are critical to assimilation or integration working."

Blair warns of the danger of "washing religion out of the school curriculum" and fingers the exact point, namely, "it is not about trying to make people religious but trying to help people to understand the world".

This is the best argument against the rise of secular intolerance and its distorting of history in the education system by seeking to downgrade or eliminate religion in the West's story.

On the economic front, Blair believes the model of Western governance is under "real challenge" given the dilemmas in Europe and the US where political systems are in trouble.

"The issue is whether your political system is in gridlock or whether you are able to achieve traction and get the changes made.

"The danger for modern democracy is not so much the issues people write about, transparency and accountability. The actual problem and challenge is efficacy and effectiveness.

"It's delivering the results."

Yet he remains an optimist on the US, saying: "It is perfectly possible for America to recover its confidence and I think it will."

He criticises the orthodox response to the global financial crisis and his remarks constitute an unintended critique of Kevin Rudd and the Labor government.

"I think there was a mistaken view that a very traditional Keynesianism combined with 'the state is back in fashion' was the answer," Blair says.

He notes that political parties running this line tend to suffer election defeats.

"In reality, the 21st century is very different from the 1930s. Now, I'm not saying governments didn't have to act with measures to stimulate jobs. But this generalised notion the state is back in fashion and that the market has failed, well, I think that was a mistaken view."

On climate change, Blair believes in action but is realistic about the problems. He separates the short term and long term.

In the long run, Blair believes "it is absolutely clear the world will move away from carbon dependence".

Yes, people "can still debate the science, but the overwhelming consensus is there's a problem".

The direction is clear but the issue is "the pace at which we move". Blair believes carbon pricing is "the way to go", rejecting the Tony Abbott mantra.

He does not believe, however, the US will legislate a cap and trade scheme "any time soon".

While backing action, he gets impatient with activists saying "unless you hit this percentage by this precise date then the whole thing's not worth doing". Exactly.

He dismisses the idea that "people are going to consume less in today's world". There is "no way the emerging middle class in China and India will take that view".

The real solution lies in technology that allows society "to live as well but differently". He thinks nuclear power "will be part of the total mix" and says before he left office he renewed Britain's nuclear power stations.

He speculates that for Australia much depends on the course of future coal technology. As a "visiting Pom" he won't offer Australia advice. Blair is too media-savvy for that. Looking at the winter weather, he jokes that he told his staff: "We are coming here to die."