MARTIN BRIGHT: After that £41,000-a-month deal with the Saudis... I wish Blair's money grabbing cynicism surprised me. But having worked for him, it doesn't By Martin Bright, Former Website Editor With Tony Blair Faith Foundation Sadly, I was not entirely surprised when the secret contract detailing Tony Blair's £41,000 a month job with a Saudi oil company was revealed this weekend. While working at the former Prime Minister's Faith Foundation earlier this year, I became increasingly concerned about links between our patron and oppressive regimes across the Muslim world and beyond. Kazakhstan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia all fell within the Blair orbit - as did Nigeria, Rwanda and India. Before I joined the Blair empire - as editor of a website on faith and global conflict - I knew of the controversy surrounding the advice the former Prime Minister had given to the Kazakhstan dictator, Nursultan Nazarbayev, in exchange for an £8 million salary. But I was assured the business dealings of his consultancy firm, Tony Blair Associates, wouldn't affect my editorial independence. It soon became clear that this was far from the case. Intolerant Blair was so embedded in the business and politics of the Middle East that it was difficult to move without coming across his influence or finding evidence of his fingerprints. I remember well when I first raised my concerns about Saudi connections at the Foundation. Chief executive Charlotte Keenan had asked me to accompany her on a trip to Vienna for a conference on "interfaith dialogue." The Saudi host organisation would be paying for our flights and accommodation. I found this odd. Why were we accepting the hospitality of one the most intolerant regimes on earth, I asked? I was told that the organisation was committed to promoting human rights and respect between religious communities. Senior academic specialists had been persuaded to work at the Saudi organisation. But it still seemed bizarre that a country which allows only the most austere version of Islam at home should promote dialogue abroad. To me, the concept of "Saudi interfaith work" seemed like a huge geopolitical joke. Though I was told it was important to make links with Saudi reformers, I remained convinced this organisation was a smokescreen put up to try to persuade people Saudi Arabia wasn't such a bad place after all. In any case, during our trip to Vienna we had a very convivial time discussing the future of the international interfaith industry. In the surroundings of an ancient palace, adorned with murals by the decadent 19th century artist Gustav Klimt, we discussed how best to map the activity of interfaith groups using new technology. It was a surreal experience. I am now more convinced than ever that the Foundation's work with the Saudis was a catastrophic error of judgment. For decades, organisations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have warned of abuses in the desert kingdom. During August, 19 people were beheaded after having been accused of offences that included several for drug smuggling and one for "sorcery." A recent report by Amnesty International described a "systematic and ruthless campaign of persecution" against Saudi dissidents in the wake of the Arab uprisings. Just last month, a cleric from the Shia branch of Islam was sentenced to death for criticising the Saudi regime. The man, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, has a large following among the country's Shia minority in the east of the country and is seen as a threat to the stability of the country. One charge against him was "breaking allegiance with the ruler, King Abdullah." Deal: Tony Blair in 2010 with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, right. Mr Blair signed a contract with PetroSaudi, a firm founded by his son I wonder what the staff at the Saudi organisation in Vienna would make of this particular show of "interreligious and intercultural dialogue"? When I returned to London from Vienna, the moral contradictions of Mr Blair's Faith Foundation became more obvious. Long meetings were convened between Blair's legions of media advisors - the Faith Foundation alone had a media team of five - to discuss "strategic communications" on the charity's public position on the various parts of the world where Blair's influence was felt. Issues included how we would write about the Israel-Palestine conflict, considering Blair's role as Middle East peace envoy? What would be our position on Egypt's ongoing problems when our patron had thrown his weight behind the country's authoritarian new leader, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi? Where did we stand on Kazakhstan? How would we deal with Blair's close relationship with the controversial Rwandan leader Paul Kagame? Where would Blair stand on the ultra-nationalist Indian leader Narendra Modi? And then there was Iraq. The publication of the Chilcot Report into the Iraq war was a subject of near-obsessive concern during my five-month spell at the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. By the time I resigned in May, it was clear to me that the charity Blair set up to bring about a greater understanding of faith and conflict was fatally damaged by its patron's legacy as a politician, and by his ongoing business dealings. However, to Blair's supporters, his great strength was that he believed it was right for a politician to make moral judgments that would lead, ultimately, to an ethical foreign policy. The former Prime Minister's belief in "humanitarian intervention" seemed the logical extension of this philosophy. Yet by the spring of this year, he appeared to have developed a distinctly more cynical approach. This seemed to be reflected in a speech he made at the London headquarters of the business news service Bloomberg. Distasteful He argued that in the fight against extremist Islam, our enemy's enemy might have to become our friend. However distasteful it might seem, China and Russia would have to become allies in the fight against these radicals. In the case of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, this logic might even have to extend to the murderous regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. This new thinking certainly explained his willingness to embrace Egyptian president al-Sisi as a block on the power of the Muslim Brotherhood. While working at the former Prime Minister's Faith Foundation earlier this year,Martin Bright became increasingly concerned about links between Blair and oppressive regimes across the Muslim world In his speech, Blair replaced the principles that lay behind years of humanitarian intervention with what I saw as an altogether more cynical approach to foreign policy. But such an approach does not bear close scrutiny in an alliance with Saudi Arabia. The new doctrine simply supports one brutal, sectarian interpretation of Islam in opposition to another. In one sense, this might be seen as a return to the "strongman" politics of the Cold War era. Such realpolitik was famously summarised by U.S. president Franklin D Roosevelt who is supposed to have said of Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza: "He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch." For Blair, too, the Saudis may be ruthless sectarian Islamists, but at least they are our ruthless sectarian Islamists. Such cynicism is perhaps understandable in an international statesman. But a faith-based charity needs to respect the universal principles of human rights and freedom of worship. Quagmire So how did Tony Blair and his Faith Foundation get themselves into this moral quagmire? When Blair left Downing Street in 2007 he took a job with U.S. investment bank JP Morgan, one of the companies that some blame for sparking the international economic crisis of 2008. Indeed, Faith Foundation chief executive Charlotte Keenan and her deputy, Matthew Lawrence, also came from JP Morgan. Both are talented individuals, but they couldn't reasonably be expected to advise on the finer points of ethical wealth management. Reading the latest revelations about Tony Blair charging £41,000 a month and a two per cent commission on multi-million-pound deals he brokers for the Saudis, I am relieved that I got out of his empire when I did. I remain convinced that we need a greater understanding of the role religion plays in conflicts around the globe and I am proud of what I achieved in the short time I was with the charity. But Tony Blair and his Faith Foundation are not the right people to do this work. An organisation of this nature needs to speak freely on religious persecution and must choose its partners very carefully. However many interfaith front organisations Saudi Arabia establishes around the globe, a regime that persecutes its religious minorities and beheads people for "sorcery" is not a credible ally in the fight against extremism. n Martin Bright was website editor at the Tony Blair Faith Foundation