'But sources close to Blair insist that he is not in any way indulging in a mea culpa over past interventions by the west, including in Iraq. In the future, he writes, "the purpose should be to change the policy of governments; to start to treat this issue of religious extremism as an issue that is about religion as well as politics, to go to the roots of where a false view of religion is being promulgated and to make it a major item on the agenda of world leaders to combine effectively to combat it. This is a struggle that is only just beginning.'
The Gods have always used oracles and prophets. madmen and women hearing voices, to communicate their message to earth. The Greek Gods got a lot of fun about it; the God of the Jews, for all the famous Jewish sense of humour, was usually more serious and direct. His message was often Blair's: forsake a 'false sense of religion'.
Our Gods on earth, inhabiting their modern versions of Olympus - often located in the more expensive residential areas of London, can be recognised by their need, or privilege, to have their more gnomic utterances clarified, not by their own direct statements, but by hints and nuances by 'sources close to' or 'members of their inner circle'. (Rupert Murdoch famously has a 'representative on earth'. Of course we poor worshippers cannot be sure that the modern priesthood have always got things quite right or clear.
Tony Blair, like his erstwhile co-deity, George W Bush, clearly knows a thing or two about religion - and truth and falsehood.
