Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned Monday that "political Islam" remains a "first-class" and growing threat to global security, nearly 20 years after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
"The strength of radical Islam has not diminished since the 9/11 attacks, even if fortunately no terrorist attack of this magnitude has occurred since then," said Blair, who had involved Britain in the Afghanistan war alongside the United States.
He added during a conference at the British think tank that "political Islam, whether in terms of faith or violence, is a security threat of the first degree. If it is not controlled, it will come to us, even if its center is far from us, as the September 11 attacks showed / September (...) It is a global threat that is getting worse.”
He called on world powers, including Britain's non-Western allies, to unite with the aim of adopting a "common strategy".
He believed that China, Russia and many Muslim countries had an interest in confronting "radical Islam".
In the ten years he spent at the head of the British government, starting in 1997, Blair established close relations with former US President George W. Bush.
But the decisions of military interventions in the Middle East, especially in Iraq, which were not popular in Britain, played a major role in his downfall in 2007 and the handover of power to his successor, Gordon Brown.
Blair was a strong supporter of US-led military action in Afghanistan and Iraq.