Blair made this observation in November 2002, four months before the invasion of Iraq, when he invited six experts to Downing Street to brief him on the likely consequences of the war.

The experts warned that Iraq was a complicated place, riven by deep communal enmities, which Saddam had dominated for over thirty-five years.

Destroying the regime would leave a vacuum; the country could be shaken by Sunni rebellion and might well descend into civil war.

These dangers left the Prime Minister unmoved.

What mattered was Saddam's moral iniquity.

The divided society over which he ruled was irrelevant. Get rid of the tyrant and his regime, and the forces of good would prevail.

If Saddam was uniquely evil twelve years ago, we have it on the authority of our leaders that ISIS is uniquely evil today.

Until it swept into Iraq a few months ago, the jihadist group was just one of several that had benefited from the campaign being waged by Western governments and their authoritarian allies in the Gulf in support of the Syrian opposition's struggle to overthrow Bashar al-Assad.

Since then ISIS has been denounced continuously and with increasing intensity; but there has been no change in the ruthless ferocity of the group, which has always practised what a radical Islamist theorist writing under the nameAbu Bakr Naji described in an internet handbook in 2006 as "the management of savagery." Continue reading

• John Gray in ABC Religion & Ethics

John Gray is formerly Emeritus Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and the author of many books.

Also suffering are places where we have only in recent years seen such violence: Nigeria, and in many parts of central Africa, in Russia and across central Asia, and in Burma, Thailand and the Philippines.

We can either see all of these acts of killing as separate - produced by various political contexts - or we can start to see the clear common theme and start to produce a genuine global strategy to deal with it.

The fact is that, though of course there are individual grievances or reasons for the violence in each country, there is one thing self-evidently in common: the acts of terrorism are perpetrated by people motivated by an abuse of religion.

It is a perversion of faith. Continue reading.

Tony Blair is a former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and founder of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation.

Source: The Guardian

Image: livinginphilistia.blogspot.com

This is, of course, typical of the willingness of women of faith to make new commitments, innovate, and take risks. The women who have inspired me most recently have shared these attributes: they are the Catholic Sisters who are dealing with sexual trafficking.

It would be hard to pick out any particular one. That would be the last thing they would want. They work together, across continents, in networks. They call sexual trafficking the new slavery. Some work at the UN, the equivalents of the William Wilberforces of old. But the work of most is much more at grassroots, demanding and sometimes dangerous.

Nuns work with the police, get girls out of brothels, brave local mafias. They seem a long way from the old Hollywood movie nuns with their wimples and distinctive habits, bobbing out of cloisters to smile at Bing Crosby in a clerical collar. It is hard to remember that, not too long ago, they had to seek permission from bishops to study gynaecology, and some were even advised by their Mother Superior on how to vote.

Their celibacy is chosen. They give themselves entirely to caring for trafficked women, protecting them in safe houses, educating about the dangers of "attractive" job offers overseas, helping them escape from vicious pimps, making safe their return to their families in the midst of threats. This does not make celibacy easy or less of a sacrifice. Their spirituality is not incidental either. Read more

Sources

• Tony Blair in The Huffington Post
• Image: Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity

Archbishop Rino Fisichella, President of the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelisation, had harsh words for the former Prime Minister, who became a Catholic in 2007 and whose comments were reported in the Independent on Sunday.

He said: "If the stories in the press about Blair's thinking are true, I think he should examine his conscience carefully", Vatican Insider reported.

Meanwhile Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, was expected to praise marriage today. In a Social Justice Strategy Paper he is expected to say that the stability of the parents' relationship is a key factor in the development of children and that marriage is particularly good for children, The Telegraph reported.

Blair, who introduced same-sex civil unions to Britain, is reported as telling friends that he "strongly supports" plans for gay marriage.

Blair's support of gay marriage is likely to upset the Vatican and is likely to see him also at odds with Archbishop of Westminister, Vincent Nichols, who wrote a letter to England and Wales' 5 million Catholics. The letter was read at all masses on Sunday.

Blair joined the Catholic Church in 2007, just 6 months after resigning as Prime Minister and in what Vatican spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi SJ, described as an occasion that "can only arouse joy and respect".

Mindful of events in Britain and the United States, Pope Benedict XVI, on Friday, called on visiting U.S. bishops to fight the "powerful political and cultural currents seeking to alter the legal definition of marriage."

The Holy Father's comments follow those of Scotland's Cardinal, Keith O'Brien who as outlined in CathNews, described gay marriage as "madness", "a grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right", and a "redefinition of reality".

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu have also expressed their serious concerns.

The British government is expected to release a consultation document detailing its plans on the law next week.

Sources

• The Independent
• Christian Post
• Image: The Telegraph

The point is that though the aspect of religion that sometimes wrongly seems to mirror superstition is on the decline; the aspect of Faith that is about creating a basis of moral guidance for life is very much still with us.

Moreover, people do not see that basis as coming from humanity alone, but reflecting the will of a Higher Being. Yet the empirical evidence as to how people view Faith today is hard to come by. We really need accurate qualitative and quantitative surveys and they are thin on the ground.

Read more about why religiously illiterate people cannot lead in the 21st century and how an increasingly religiously illiterate Europe can deal with a world in which religion plays an increasing and sometimes dominant role.

Tony Blair writes "I was in a province of China recently where I met the governor - a Muslim - who openly asked about, and was interested in, my Faith Foundation activities. Official Chinese surveys show that nearly one in three Chinese describe themselves as religious. This is not where they were 30 years ago."

Read Tony Blair's article in the Washington Post

Photo Credit
livinginphilistia.blogspot.com