Understanding other religions is key to peace, Tony Blair tells Dubai

An understanding of other religions may hold the key to peaceful global coexistence, the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said yesterday during a visit to the Winchester School in Dubai. “If we only understood each other a little better it might be easier to get along with each other,” he said during an event last night held in his honour. “Ignorance breeds fear and fear breeds conflict.”

“So what we want,” he said, “is for there to be understanding, because understanding usually brings with it the possibility of peaceful coexistence.”

Mr Blair was in Dubai to discuss his Tony Blair Faith Foundation, a non-profit organisation he established, with Gems Education, the UAE’s largest private school operator, after he left office in 2007.

“Understanding the links people have between the faiths, understanding how faith has shaped the lives of people, this is important, and this is what my foundation is about,” Mr Blair said, offering his thanks to Sunny Varkey, the chairman of Gems, for “helping with our foundation”. Addressing the Gems chairman during a reception at Mr Varkey’s villa, the former prime minister praised the school network’s accomplishments in Dubai.

“The work that the Varkeys are doing with their schools is remarkable,” he said. “It’s groundbreaking.”

The Tony Blair Faith Foundation, whose mission is to show that “faith is a powerful force for good in the modern world,” offers free programmes for secondary schools and universities that bring students from different religions together to promote interfaith understanding.

Gems plans to introduce the foundation’s Face to Faith programme, which aims to improve religious literacy among secondary school students, in a handful of schools this year

Mr Blair took advantage of his stop in Dubai to express optimism about the emirate’s resilience. “Whatever difficulties Dubai has been through recently, like so much else of the world,” he said, “I’ve got no doubt there is a strength and vitality and vibrancy in this place that is going to see it resurge and yet again be one of the great places in the world.”

During Mr Blair’s visit to an Islamic studies class at the Winchester School, he listened while Maha Ahmed, the director of the school’s Islamic studies department, quizzed a group of teenage girls. “We were talking about women in Islam,” Ms Ahmed said. “The role of women, and her value, the rights of women, the rights that Islam gave to them, like inheritance, divorce, what the Westerners are saying about them.” Since stepping down as prime minister, Mr Blair has spent considerable time in the Middle East in his role as a special envoy to Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. – The National