There are more practising Catholics in China than in Italy - and the country has more Muslims than in Europe, said the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, according to a report on ucanews.com from the Real Clear Religion website.
"A new type of debate is taking shape," Mr Blair told a Monterrey Mexico forum on faith and globalisation.
"It can centre around immigration or protectionism but it is above all, about issues to do with culture and integration and it is altogether more vigorous and potentially more explosive."
"In the Middle East, it is about whether the West fundamentally respects or does not the religion of Islam; and the Israel-Palestine dispute is caught up with it. In Europe, it is about whether our attempt to integrate cultures has succeeded or failed," he said in a keynote speech at Monterrey Tecnológico University in Mexico.
Religion is key to understanding the Middle East, he emphasised, and religion also plays a key role in other nations and regions.
"In China, where there are more Muslims than in Europe and more practising Catholics than in Italy, and around 100m Buddhists, Faith shapes many lives," he noted.
"So my point is very simple. Wherever you look today, religion matters. Faith motivates. Understanding faith, its adherents, its trends, its structures, can be as important as understanding a nation's GDP, its business, its resources."
"Globalisation is accelerating all these trends. We adjust or we are swept away," he concluded.
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