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Tony Blair was asked on Meet The Press if he thought President Bush was correct to categorize the Iraq war as part of the war on terrorism. David Gregory suggested history would judge the war to be a war of choice that turned into a misadventure. Blair’s response strikes to the heart of what is happening within the Muslim world and its impact on the rest of the world. He speaks about a toxic cocktail of religion, politics, ethnicity and tribalism. Blair warns that the perverted, violent ideology that is causing such turmoil in the Middle East and elsewhere has to be stopped. He did not suggest how or even if there is any willingness on the part of Western leaders to do so.

This ideology, unnamed by Blair, that is a perversion of religion is every bit as dangerous to the entire world as the ideology of Communism, especially if its adherents get a hold of weapons of mass destruction. Blair is correct that it has to be dealt with. So who is dealing with it? The American President can’t even bring himself to speak words as challenging as those used by Mr. Blair.

Everyone looks for dots after a terrorist attack. The American media are quick to point out lone wolves or “self-radicalized” terrorists. If they are not related to the political right that is. If the media can’t find an al Qaeda connection, they stop looking for anything else. The media will then wallow in asking if the alienation was brought on by Western culture or politics or both. But there are certain dots that appear all over the world when it comes violent Islamism. They are the black dots of Salafism and all those black dots trace back to one giant dot—Saudi Arabia.

Blair:

I think in the controversy around that, around how you categorize it, will remain. What I thought was removing Saddam happened within a matter of weeks. You then spent the next eight, nine years in a different type of battle and that was a battle against precisely the forces that are trying to destabilize the Middle East today. Al Qaeda on the one side, Iran on the other side, and this toxic cocktail, if you like, of religion, politics, ethnicity, tribalism. I think the difficulties we ended up encountering in Iraq were difficulties that arose from precisely this force of terror unleashed by religious extremism, and I think that’s frankly what we still face today. If you see what’s happening in Syria today, that entirely encapsulates it as it does across North Africa, Yemen, further afield, countries like Pakistan and Iran.

Gregory went on to ask:

It’s striking as the president was opening his library today, there emerged reports out of Syria that the Assad regime may have used chemical weapons, a red line for this administration. What lessons did did you learn, did President Bush learn, that you hope President Obama takes into account?

Blair:

I think the lessons are really tough, you see, and very difficult and I think the trouble is the lessons themselves are subject to great and heated debate. My view is that in the end the whole of the Middle East and beyond is undergoing this period of huge transition where you have these dictatorial regimes whose time is up you. On the other hand, the battle for the future is between what I would call the modern-minded types of people, the people who took to the streets first in Egypt, who want what we want, but against them are various groups, Islamist groups, that I’m afraid don’t have the same concept, democracy or freedom, that we do. If any of them get hold of the potential to engage in mass destruction, we’ve got a huge problem on our hands.

…the fact is this, ideology is being pumped around websites, is being encouraged by people in many different parts of the world. and it’s there and it’s very hard for us to deal with. The first obligation of a government is to try to protect its people, but then you’ve got to cast out this ideology. I think this is very similar to the fight we faced in the 20th century against Fascism and Communism, it’s an ideology. It’s not one command and control center. You’re not talking about a country, but you are talking about an ideology based on a perversion of religion which has enormous force. If you don’t deal with this issue, this long-term question, ideology based on the religion of Islam, you are going to end up fighting this for a long time.

A sampling of Salafism’s influence:

How Saudi petrodollars fuel rise of Salafism

Since the 2011 Arab revolts, a loose network of underground zealots has evolved into a potent and highly vocal force. Behind the remarkable rise of Salafism lies the world’s leading producer of oil – and extremist Islam: Saudi Arabia.

Exporting its own brand of Islam is not the only item on Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy agenda. “While they see themselves as the guardians of Islamic doctrine and have always generously financed Muslim missionaries, the Saudis’ priority is not to ‘salafise’ the Muslim world,” explained Amghar. “Their real aim is to consolidate their political and ideological influence by establishing a network of supporters capable of defending the kingdom’s strategic and economic interests.”

Salafist Militants May Be Attackers Of U.S. Consulate In Benghazi

Salafist Organization Banned in Germany

Some 1,000 German police in seven states raided facilities belonging to ultra-conservative Salafist organizations on Thursday, as the Interior Ministry announced that one such group has been banned. Authorities are concerned about the growing numbers of violence-prone Salafists in the country.

Salafism: Why ultra-conservative Islam is finding support in post-revolution Egypt

Speaking to me after Friday prayers, he explains that he believes in changing society by teaching people at grass roots level rather than through the violent jihad espoused by some other Salafists – but his long term aims are the same.

“The changes we seek are to apply the Islamic Sharia – the Islamic law to achieve social justice,” he says.”And to establish an Islamic Caliphate, to liberate the occupied lands – lands occupied by non-Muslims, the lands which were originally Muslim.” His list of lands that need to be re-taken includes Palestine, Iraq, Burma, Chechnya and Andalucia in Spain

Recoiling the Arab Spring (video report)

The ultra-conservative Salafist movement, which is said to be the fastest growing branch of Islam, has been blamed for being behind many of the recent violent protests over an anti-Muslim film which appeared on the internet. Jenny Cuffe investigates the spread of Salafism across the countries of the Arab Spring. She asks what threat it poses to democracy in the whole region and also examines concerns in Europe that Salafists now represent a significant security risk.

Salafis in Tunisia

The most radical of Salafis, carrying sticks and swords, have attacked cultural events and shrines they consider un-Islamic. They ransacked stores selling alcohol and clashed with the police. Salafi militants are also accused of leading last year’s fiery attacks on the U.S. Embassy and the American school in Tunis.

Salafism on rise in North Africa: Algeria moves to stem imported religious ideas

Algerian authorities give all-clear for union of imams to protect country’s moderate form of Islam from teachings of hardline Salafists.

The Taliban,Salafi ideology: Leaning from history

Salafism is the inspiration for the Taliban ideology, and both have manifested themselves in the battlegrounds of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Sheikh Who May Have Influenced Boston’s Tsarnaev Brothers

The YouTube page belonging to someone named Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the same name as one of the two brothers who allegedly dropped pressure-cooker bombs at the finish line of the marathon Monday, includes several links to videos from an Australian Muslim preacher who has called for the beheading of a Dutch politician

The videos were sermons delivered by Feiz Mohammad, a former boxer of Lebanese descent who now preaches an extreme version of Sunni Islam known as Salafism.

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Analysis: A Salafi conspiracy in Boston bombings?

these two young men, above all else, are Muslims. But not just any Muslims. They are Sunnis, indeed adherents of its most radical sect — the Salafis. Salafi warriors swept across the Arabian Peninsula nearly a century ago, wreaking havoc in the name of the king of the new nation of Saudi Arab. More recently, this same radical ideology is shared by the leadership of al-Qaeda. And the sworn enemy of al-Qaeda, from its earliest days, has been the United States — the Great Satan.

The demand for religious teachers quickly outpaced the supply, so Chechen students began heading to Saudi Arabia, site of the holiest Islamic city, Mecca, only to meet radical teachers at the very moment other radical clerics were making their way from Arabia and Turkey to Chechnya and Dagestan. Saudi oil money facilitated the rise of radical mosques from Pakistan across Afghanistan and into Chechnya — along with the ties to radical organizations like al-Qaeda.

Salafism is a faction that originated more than a century ago in Egypt. Salafis want to restore Islam to its Medina roots. The Arabic word “salaf” means “ancient one”. It is harsh on women and non-believers although not all Salifis advocate violence. In Saudia Arabia Salifism and Wahhabism combined with Muslim Brotherhood thinking to create a noxious hybrid. Sometimes Salafism is called the export brand of Wahhabism. Saudi Arabia is not so much interested in establishing a pure form of Islam as it is determined to keep the royal family in business.

Something Curious is Happening to Sunni Islam

When the 1973 Arab oil embargo sent oil prices into a sustained soar, Islamist scholar, Gilles Kepel has remarked, the sustained flow of petro-dollars suddenly offered the Saudis the vast means to pursue its “ancient ambition” for establishing hegemony over the Muslim world; and of spreading its Wahhabi orientation to the world (Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, trans. A. Roberts, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Mass., 2000, p 69). After 1973, the activities of the League grew exponentially: Saudi zeal now embraced the entire world. The Saudi objective, Kepel observes, was to ‘Salafize’ Islam, thereby reducing the “multiple voices within the religion” to the “single creed” of Saudi Arabia (Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, p 70-73). In short, the aim was to limit Islam to a restricted array of symbols drawn from the early communities, which would then be invested in a solidly organized dogma and ritual, under the authority of the Saudi King.

So it was, that everywhere throughout the Muslim world, the building of mosques was accompanied by the distribution of texts and teachings promoting Salafism. The irony of this massive effort is that, as it was being disseminated across the world, so this teaching was being significantly inflected by with the teachings of Sunni Islamism, and most particularly by those of the Brotherhood, whose members were essential to the spread and advancement of Saudi Arabia’s global project.

Saudi Arabia recently opened a rehabilitation center for jihadists. How are they rehabilitating terrorists? By spa treatments, exercise and introducing them to Salafism.

The royal Saudi family is threatened by any attempt to reform or modernize Islam. Democracy is unacceptable. The unquestioned authority and privileged lifestyle of the royal rulers must survive. Saudi hegemony over the Muslim world is the royal family’s dream.

Yes, Mr. Blair, we will have a problem for a long time to come. As long as the Saudis have money and no one has the backbone to challenge them.