KEY POINTS:
Tony Blair has launched a powerful attack on "absurd" British Islamists who have nurtured a false "sense of grievance" that they are being oppressed by Britain and the United States.
In his most outspoken remarks on Islamists, the former Prime Minister warns that Britain is in danger of losing the battle against terrorists unless mainstream society confronts the threat.
Blair's remarks, in which he describes some civil liberty campaigners as "loopy loo", were made in a Channel 4 television documentary recorded on the eve of his departure from Downing Street and before the failed London and Glasgow bomb attacks.
"The idea that as a Muslim in this country you don't have the freedom to express your religion or your views ... you've got far more freedom in this country than you do in most Muslim countries," Blair told Observer newspaper columnist Will Hutton, who presents the documentary.
"The reason we are finding it hard to win this battle is that we're not fighting it properly. We're not standing up to these people and saying, 'It's not just your methods that are wrong, your ideas are absurd. Nobody is oppressing you. Your sense of grievance isn't justified'."
Blair cited the overthrow of the Taleban in Afghanistan - criticised by Islamists as an example of the heavy-handed imperial West oppressing Muslims - to highlight unfounded claims of grievance.
He asked how it was possible to claim that Afghanistan's Muslims were being oppressed when the Taleban "used to execute teachers for teaching girls in school".
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