WASHINGTON — Former British prime minister Tony Blair said Oct. 7 that Muslims and Christians working to understand each other’s cultural and religious beliefs could help build a global movement for peace. “In religion, we are told to love your God, love your neighbors as yourself,” Blair said at a Georgetown University panel on the future of Muslim-Christian relations, adding that too often, people view their neighbors as only those with similar beliefs.
Blair said both Christians and Muslims had been outsiders at one point in their histories and each had wrestled with how its own beliefs defied convention at one time. “If we can get on, the 21st-century world can get on,” he said. “It’s true we are different, but so were our founders.”
Along with former prime ministers of Norway and Malaysia, as well as religious experts, Blair participated in the opening discussion of the “A Common Word Between Us and You: A Global Agenda for Change” conference, which aims to foster global peace and security between Muslim and Western societies. Similar conferences have also been hosted by Yale University, the University of Cambridge and the Vatican. The ongoing conferences grew out of a multivocal Muslim response to a controversial 2006 speech by Pope Benedict XVI implicitly linking the spread of Islam with violence.
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