Tony Blair : Islam the Stan­dard-Bear­er of Tolerance

We present as fol­lows a quote from Tony Blair, Prime Min­is­ter of Unit­ed King­dom, which was pub­lished quite recent­ly in For­eign Affairs, January/​February 2007. With regard to his views on the Qur’an and the reli­gion of Islam, it is obvi­ous that the deen has a proven track-record of reli­gious tol­er­ance unpar­al­leled in world his­to­ry and is con­ced­ed by his­to­ri­ans in the likes of De Lacy O Leary and Thomas W. Arnold. Unlike Chris­tian­i­ty — in brief, a bar­bar­ic and intol­er­ant reli­gion which only appeal is that it is coat­ed in Roman pagan­is­tic rit­u­als — call­ing for the destruc­tion of reli­gious com­mu­ni­ties dif­fer­ent from its own (and which was exem­pli­fied in the Cru­sades, the Span­ish Inqui­si­tion and even today in Iraq and Afghanistan), Islam brought its shin­ing light to world civ­i­liza­tions, set­ting an unprece­dent­ed exam­ple of reli­gious tol­er­ance and prosperity.

The quote is as fol­lows. High­light­ed empha­sis is our own.

    To me, the most remark­able thing about the Koran is how pro­gres­sive it is. I write with great humil­i­ty as a mem­ber of anoth­er faith. As an out­sider, the Koran strikes me as a reform­ing book, try­ing to return Judaism and Chris­tian­i­ty to their ori­gins, much as reform­ers attempt­ed to do with the Chris­t­ian church cen­turies lat­er. The Koran is inclu­sive. It extols sci­ence and knowl­edge and abhors super­sti­tion. It is prac­ti­cal and far ahead of its time in atti­tudes toward mar­riage, women, and governance.

    Under its guid­ance, the spread of Islam and its dom­i­nance over pre­vi­ous­ly Chris­t­ian or pagan lands were breath­tak­ing. Over cen­turies, Islam found­ed an empire and led the world in dis­cov­ery, art, and cul­ture. The stan­dard-bear­ers of tol­er­ance in the ear­ly Mid­dle Ages were far more like­ly to be found in Mus­lim lands than in Chris­t­ian ones.For­eign Affairs, January/​February 2007

It would be inter­est­ing, of course, to see the Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies scram­bling to reply to this state­ment by Tony Blair. For more elab­o­ra­tion on the rela­tion between Islam and oth­er reli­gions, see our arti­cle : Islam and Oth­er Reli­gions as well.

And only God knows best ! Tony Blair: Islam the Standard-Bearer of Tolerance 1Endmark

Cite this arti­cle as : Mohd Elfie Nieshaem Juferi, Tony Blair : Islam the Stan­­dard-Bear­er of Tol­er­ance,” in Bis­mi­ka Allahu­ma, Decem­ber 29, 2006, last accessed March 28, 2024, https://​bis​mikaal​lahu​ma​.org/​h​i​s​t​o​r​y​/​t​o​n​y​-​b​l​a​i​r​-​i​s​l​a​m​-​t​h​e​-​s​t​a​n​d​a​r​d​-​b​e​a​r​e​r​-​o​f​-​t​o​l​e​r​a​n​ce/

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4 responses to “Tony Blair : Islam the Stan­dard-Bear­er of Tolerance”

  1. Stunned Avatar
    Stunned

    How do you like this quote tak­en from the same arti­cle and stat­ed just before the quote you have tak­en : The roots of the cur­rent wave of glob­al ter­ror­ism and extrem­ism are deep. They reach down through decades of alien­ation, vic­tim­hood, and polit­i­cal oppres­sion in the Arab and Mus­lim world. Yet such ter­ror­ism is not and nev­er has been inevitable.”

    The way you are sum­maris­ing Tony Blairs arti­cle on A Bat­tle for Glob­al Val­ues”, how you are using a short quote for your appar­ent­ly apolo­getic inter­ests in the name of Mus­lim respons­es to anti-Islam polemic” as well as the dis­tort­ed title you choose (not at all what TB said in the sen­tence you have tak­en your title from) should make the read­er very suspicious.

    Such meth­ods, the moment they are dis­cov­ered, usu­al­ly turn out to become agru­ments against the stat­ed inten­tions of the writer to search and reveal truth.

  2. shadowofears Avatar
    shadowofears

    What is ter­ror­ism exact­ly ? The Cana­di­an Win­ston Dic­tio­nary defines ter­ror­ism as follows ;

    …to fill with great alarm and fear ; reduce to a state of ter­ror ; to gov­ern by meth­ods which arouse terror…”

    We have seen through­out his­to­ry many exam­ples of ter­ror­ists and ter­ror­ism, for instance, the Cru­sades, the Inqui­si­tion, the New Eng­land Witch Hunts, Lenin, Stal­in, Pol Pot, Mus­soli­ni, Adolf Hitler, the IRA, the Ku Klux Klan, Tim­o­thy McVeigh, David Kor­resh and Miloso­vich, just to name a few. The evil actions of those men­tioned speak for them­selves, with the crimes they per­pe­trat­ed against human­i­ty. Sad­ly, today, ter­ror­ism con­tin­ues at a fever­ish pace, with no end in sight. Anoth­er sad fact is that the word Ter­ror­ism” has some­how become syn­ony­mous with the word Mus­lim”. The reli­gion of Islam is being pre­sent­ed by cer­tain media and reli­gious groups as a reli­gion of war and vio­lence. The term Islam­ic Fun­da­men­tal­ists” seems to be the in vogue catch phrase when it comes to describ­ing the actions of a mis­guid­ed few. How­ev­er, when one exam­ines the true mean­ing of the word Fun­da­men­tal­ist”, you will real­ize that the Fun­da­men­tals of Islam do not con­form to the actions of ter­ror­ists. Quite the con­trary, Islam is a reli­gion whose fun­da­men­tal teach­ings per­tain to peace and under­stand­ing and it is these True Qur’an­ic teach­ings that I wish to explore here, Insha’Allah(God Will­ing). It is sad to think that when­ev­er a crime is com­mit­ted by a Mus­lim, the reli­gion of Islam is put on tri­al. If we were to fol­low that anal­o­gy, and con­sid­er­ing that, with the excep­tion of Lenin, Stal­in and Pol Pot, all the above men­tioned indi­vid­u­als and groups were Chris­t­ian or from a Chris­t­ian back­ground, is it right to blame all Chris­tians and the reli­gion of Chris­tian­i­ty for the crimes com­mit­ted by these ter­ror­ists ? And con­sid­er­ing that the fathers of com­mu­nism were all Jew­ish or of a Jew­ish back­ground, would it be prop­er and fair to blame all Jews and the reli­gion of Judaism for the evils of com­mu­nism ? No, it is not right and just the same, to blame all Mus­lims and the reli­gion of Islam for the crimes com­mit­ted by ter­ror­ists is equal­ly wrong

  3. DoctorMaybe Avatar
    DoctorMaybe

    Jab­ber­wolf you are as thick as two short planks. Of the many erro­neous state­ments you made against Islam, this I found to be the most igno­rant : Islam has nev­er been tol­er­ant in his­to­ry and today shows no sign of it”
    Let’s see what the Encar­ta Ency­clo­pe­dia 2007 CD has to say :

    The Mus­lim rulers did not force their reli­gion on the Pales­tini­ans, and more than a cen­tu­ry passed before the major­i­ty con­vert­ed to Islam. The remain­ing Chris­tians and Jews were con­sid­ered Peo­ple of the Book.” They were allowed autonomous con­trol in their com­mu­ni­ties and guar­an­teed secu­ri­ty and free­dom of wor­ship. Such tol­er­ance (with few excep­tions) was rare in the his­to­ry of reli­gion. Most Pales­tini­ans also adopt­ed Ara­bic and Islam­ic cul­ture. Pales­tine ben­e­fit­ed from the empire’s trade and from its reli­gious sig­nif­i­cance dur­ing the first Mus­lim dynasty, the Umayyads of Dam­as­cus. When pow­er shift­ed to Baghd?d with the Abbasids in 750, Pales­tine became neglect­ed. It suf­fered unrest and suc­ces­sive dom­i­na­tion by Seljuks, Fatimids, and Euro­pean Cru­saders (see Caliphate ; Cru­sades). It shared, how­ev­er, in the glo­ry of Mus­lim civ­i­liza­tion, when the Mus­lim world enjoyed a gold­en age of sci­ence, art, phi­los­o­phy, and lit­er­a­ture. Mus­lims pre­served Greek learn­ing and broke new ground in sev­er­al fields, all of which lat­er con­tributed to the Renais­sance in Europe. Like the rest of the empire, how­ev­er, Pales­tine under the Mam­luks grad­u­al­ly stag­nat­ed and declined.
    Microsoft ® Encar­ta ® 2007. © 1993 – 2006 Microsoft Cor­po­ra­tion. All rights reserved.

    Anoth­er inter­est­ing find­ing of Gor­don D. New­by who said in his book, A Con­cise Ency­clo­pe­dia of Islam”: As the dif­fer­ent ver­sion of Islam­ic prac­tice spread first through­out the Mediter­ranean world and then beyond, to South Asia, to Africa, and to South East Asia, they brough a new mod­el for liv­ing ground­ed in the Quran and the Sun­nah of Muham­mad”. he con­tin­ues, It brought a world­wide net­work of trade in com­modi­ties and ideas that made the Islam­ic life attrac­tive wher­ev­er it went. Even in the ear­li­est peri­od, when Mus­lims were con­quer­ing the ancient empires, Islam’s suc­ces­sion at con­ver­sion was through attrac­tion rather than coercion”

  4. Jabberwolf Avatar
    Jabberwolf

    Islam has a prooven track record of Tolerance ?
    So they inva­tions of Europe ‑mass mur­ders, Span­ish viso­goths vio­lent­ly kicked out, India where mil­lions upon mil­lions were mur­dered of the cen­turies for not believe­ing the same as Muslims.
    It’s fun­ny where Mus­lims con­ve­nient­ly for­get his­to­ry. If you doubt any of what I said please look it up, as many mus­lims sim­ply refuse to do. I will give you a head start, please look up the name Aurangzeb”.

    [Admin : Your lit­tle lying polemic has been refut­ed here. Go back and learn more.]

    Com­pared today, in West­ern coun­tries, where reli­gions of all faiths have equal pro­tec­tion and may wear PUBLICALLY their reli­gious cus­toms, in ISLAMIC coun­tries, this is for­bid­den. That is unless its Islam­ic, then its per­mit­ted. Again this is in Turkey, Indone­sia, Yemen, and oth­er back­ward Islam­ic nations. West­ern nations live in peace where reli­gions do not give one cit­i­zen more sta­tus over anoth­er. This is not the case where Islam is pre­v­e­lent in gov­ern­ment in Islam­ic countries.

    Yes Tony Blair shows tol­er­ance, tor­wards the intol­er­ant ISLAM. Islam has nev­er been tol­er­ant in his­to­ry and today shows no sign of it. And allow­ing peo­ple to live under rule as sec­ond class cit­i­zens com­pared to Mus­lims, is not tol­er­ance… its a tax base from which Mus­lim rulers col­lect extortion !

    [Admin : Then you should stop pay­ing that INCOME TAX to your government.]

    As for Christ­mas being pagan” I would sug­gest Mus­lims to look where the HAJJ came from. It was cus­tom long before ISLAM, not relat­ed to Abra­ham, and part of a very clear pagan base.
    At lease chris­tians know, and face truth that Christ­mas was a merge of cus­toms. lol, no one thinks San­ta Claus is God, he just rep­re­sents a ges­ture of good faith tor­wards others.

    [Admin : Non­sense. You could not even get your facts right about Aurangzeb, and you want to teach us about our own reli­gion ? Please.]

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