Just for the sake of argument (what else would it be for on Great Debates?) I just came across Youtube of the British former Prime Minister Tony Blair making these comments http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9Thm6pLmhM&feature=player_embedded
While the Youtube posting appears to have been quite recent (January 21, 2011) I have no information on where and when he made these comments, although it appears to be a public pronouncement that is relatively recent.
What amazes me is that Blair is saying things very similar to what I have said repeatedly on this forum, and for which I have been called a bigot and a racist (Islam is a race???)
Blair is warning that the West that it must abandon its “wretched posture of apology” towards Islamic extremism.
He is saying that while it is true that the actual terrorists are a small percentage of Muslims, “the global ideology what gives rise to this extremism has far deeper roots”.
Similarly, I have never claimed that ALL Muslims are involved in terrorism or are intent on replacing western democracy with Islam. I do indeed recognize that there are moderate Muslims.
The problem is that these moderate Muslims do not control Islam or the well-financed, extremist, world-wide ideology that is intent on destroying our way of life and replacing it with submission to Allah.
To go back to an analogy I have made hundreds of times, does it really matter to a Holocaust victim that the vast majority of Germans in Nazi Germany did not want to see Jews exterminated? Or is the operative reality here that Germany was controlled by people who DID want the genocide to proceed?
Blair is more of less admitting that contempt for the West and its values is intrinsic to Islam, and that Islam is basically an ideology (he uses the word several times) that is waging a world-wide jihad against the west.
When I mentioned “world-wide jihad” I was of course called delusional and bigoted.
Note also that among the comments following the video is one by a certain ALLAHU AKBAR AlLHAMDULILAH who, far from denying that this is what Islam wants for the west, openly tells us: " Islam will never stop growing **now face it **its the fastest growing religion :)".