April 6 - Short film contest to bridge the divide
Article: One World Religion
Former British prime minister Tony Blair has announced the launch of a global short film competition, with the aim of promoting inter-faith dialogue.
In an exclusive interview with Gulf Times yesterday, Blair said that the aim of the initiative was to bring young people of different faiths together and allow them to present a positive picture of their religion to the rest of the world.
“There is often huge misrepresentation and wrong thinking about what Islam means,” he said, adding “I think therefore that it will be particularly interesting to present to a Western audience that ‘this is actually what my faith means to me – this is the Muslim perspective’ and correct some of the misapprehensions and misunderstandings around faith.”
The competition has been organised by the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, and is one of numerous programmes to have been introduced with the aim of promoting inter-faith dialogue.
The competition has been organised by the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, and is one of numerous programmes to have been introduced with the aim of promoting inter-faith dialogue.
“The most important thing to realise is that religion matters enormously to millions and millions of people – it motivates them, it provides meaning to their lives, so there is no way that religion can be excluded from society or politics,” he argued.
“So for me the question is ‘what sort of role does it play?’” he said, adding “it can inspire people to do things that are bad, but it can also inspire people to do things that are wonderful, selfless and life-enhancing.”
“In the end, I believe that the single most important thing for the 21st century is to get people of different religious faiths to live side by side in peace with each other,” he said.
Now the Middle East Peace Envoy for the Quartet, Blair spends around a week each month in the region, and has been trying to further peace talks between Palestine and Israel since accepting the role after stepping down as Prime Minister.
