Speaking at a World Economic Forum panel on religious conflict on Wednesday, former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair ducked blame after facing accusations of provoking the current instability in the Middle East.
During a panel entitled “Religion: A Pretext for Conflict?” held at the yearly gathering of global elites held annually in Davos, Switzerland, a questioner from the audience reportedly told the former PM that his decision to enter the Iraq war with former U.S. President George W. Bush in 2003 was to blame for the escalated violence across the region.
“I think you have a great responsibility for the conflicts we have now,” the questioner added, to some applause.
During his response, Blair dodged culpability and instead blamed a “closed minded view of the world” and a “perversion of Islam” which he says has perpetuated a “culture of hatred.”
Click Here: Cheap Chiefs Rugby Jersey 2019
“[M]y view is you can debate the political decisions, but at some point we have got to understand this extremism has grown up over a long period of time, over decades, its roots are deep within a perversion of the religion of Islam,” Blair said. He added that the “root problem” is that extremists are educated with a “closed minded view of the world.”
Blair continued: “And we have got to stop making excuses for those people and start to tackle the fundamental incubation of that problem, which lies in formal and informal education systems educating young people to a culture of hatred to those that are different.”
Blair further defended contemporary interventions in Africa and the Middle East and insisted that it was the right decision to go after Saddam Hussein, saying the Iraqi leader “wasn’t exactly a force for stability, peace and prosperity for his country and was responsible for killing many, many hundreds of thousands of people.”
SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT