On Wednesday, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair appeared in Gaston Hall as part of the Common Word Between US and You: A Global Agenda for Change Conference.  The gathering at Georgetown, intended to encourage dialogue and promote peace between Muslims and Christians, comes after similar events at Yale Theological Seminary and Cambridge University in 2008.

Blair appeared as part of the World Leaders Forum alongside former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia (and former Georgetown Professor) Anwar Ibrahim, former Prime Minister of Norway Kjell Magne Bondevik , and the Grand Mufti of Bosnia-Herzegovina Mustafa Cedric.  Riz Khan, host of the Al-Jazzera program that bears his name, moderated the discussion.

Each of the panelists gave a short speech, punctuated by good-humored jokes from the moderator Khan.

“I want to say how humble I feel in the presence of so many holy people.  I think I’ve been brought along to balance it out a little,” Blair said.

Gaston Hall was filled to capacity at the start of the event, with mostly conference participants on the floor and students in the balcony seating.

All of the participants emphasized that peace and understanding between Christians and Muslims would be critical to achieving harmony in the twenty-first century.

“The way forward involves the pursuit of working together—Christians, Muslims, and Jews—in a universal community of the human race, a harmonious and enriching experience of living together among people of diverse religions and cultures,” Anwar Ibrahim said.

Anwar Ibrahim, the man poised to become Malaysia’s new prime minister, is profiled in today’s Voice.  The full text of the email interview with him has been reproduced below:

To start off, why are you attempting to remove the current government from power?

In a democracy, imperfect though it is in Malaysia, you need two legitimacies to govern: a moral legitimacy and a political one.

The moral legitimacy stems from your entire deportment whilst governing – transparency of conduct, rule of law, separation of powers, integrity of office bearers, and the like.

The political legitimacy results from your effective command of the electorate and its legislators.

The National Front of Malaysia, in power for 51 years now, has been oozing its moral legitimacy to govern for at least a decade now. The judiciary was corrupted, the police force became dysfunctional, the civil service was reduced to a rubber stamp, money politics infected political parties, and matters to do with race and religion became a minefield. The economy is sluggish, now approaching quagmire status and the government has offered no solution to the problem of widespread joblessness, rampant inflation and the decline in foreign direct investment. In sum a tragic state of affairs after 51 years of governance.

The National Front’s political legitimacy was premised on its command of a two-thirds majority in Parliament. Once before it lost that majority — in 1969 when race riots flared in the aftermath of that loss. Read the rest of this entry »

Anwar Ibrahim, a faculty member at the Prince Alwaleed Bin-Tal Center for Muslim Christian Understanding and former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, has declared that he will take power in Malaysia on September 16.  Ibrahim believes he has convinced 30 government MP’s to defect to the opposition, switching the balance in Parliament and allowing the opposition he leads to control the government.  The Malaysian government response isn’t exactly Robert’s Rules–the government sent at least 50 MP’s to Taiwan on a trip expected to last for more than a week.

Ibrahim is known as a crusader against corruption and served as the Malaysian Finance Minister during the Asian financial crisis of 1997.  Ironically, Ibrahim has previously been sentenced to 6 years imprisonment on corruption charges.  He has also been accused of homosexuality on multiple occasions, an offense carrying up to a 20 year prison sentence in Malaysia.

While at Georgetown, Ibrahim taught Contemporary Islam in Southeast Asia.

Photo from Flickr user BugBitesandCo. used under a Creative Commons license