Via the Daily Mail:
In an interview with the Observer magazine, published yesterday he said: ‘To be faith-literate is crucial in a globalised world, I believe.Courageous leaders in western civilization are in short supply these days. When cowardice reaches the point of willfully selling out your country, there's usually another term applied to it.
‘I read the Qur’an [Koran] every day. Partly to understand some of the things happening in the world, but mainly just because it is immensely instructive.’
Mr Blair believes that a knowledge of the faith informs his current role as Middle East envoy for the Quartet of the United Nations, United States, European Union and Russia.
The former PM’s work, which has cost British taxpayers more than £2million, aims to help resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.Mr Blair has previously praised the Muslim faith as ‘beautiful’ and said the Prophet Mohammed had been ‘an enormously civilizing force’.
In 2006 he said the Koran was a ‘reforming book, it is inclusive. It extols science and knowledge and abhors superstition. It is practical and way ahead of its time in attitudes to marriage, women and governance’.
But Mr Blair has also faced the devastation wreaked by violent jihadists who interpret the Koran as a call to arms.
h/t Weasel Zippers
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