Bassam Tibi
Encyclopedia
Bassam Tibi born 1944 in Damascus
, lives in Germany
since 1962 and, since 1976, he is a German citizen. He is a political scientist
and Professor of International Relations. In academia, he is known for his analysis of international relations
and the introduction of Islam to the study of international conflict and of civilization. Tibi is perhaps best known for introducing the controversial concept of European Leitkultur
as well as the concept of Euroislam for the integration of Muslim immigrants in Europe. He is also the founder of Islamology as a social-scientific study of Islam and conflict in post-bipolar politics. Tibi has done research in Asian and African countries. He publishes in English, German and Arabic.
, Germany
. Between 1973 and 2009, until his retirement, he was Professor for International Relations at Göttingen University. Parallel to this appointment he was from 1982 to 2000 at Harvard University
in a variety of affiliations, the latest from 1998 to 2000 as The Bosch Fellow of Harvard. Currently, he is an A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University
. Tibi had eighteen visiting professorships in all continents including fellowships in Princeton University
, UC Berkeley, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, and most recently (2010) at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, Washington D.C. Tibi was visiting senior fellow at Yale University. Along his retirement in 2009, he published his major life-time book "Islam's Predicament with Cultural Modernity".
, but criticizes Islamism and advocates of "reforming" Islam.
Tibi suggests that Muslim immigrants should refrain from engaging in religious missionary activities, Dawa
.
is a European invention, and that Europeans must overcome what he calls "Euro-arrogance" and xenophobia
to integrate immigrants.
He criticizes European imperialism
, arguing that it disrupted and deformed other cultures. Acknowledging that Muslim conquerors also did some wrong, Tibi argues that at least Muslim conquests were not driven by any kind of racism, unlike the European conquests.
party of Israel as blocking the peace process. He states that in the 1990s, the Likud adopted the "Three Nos" policy:
According to Tibi, the Likud government of 1996 engaged in provoking Arabs by constructing Har Homa
in Arab Jerusalem
, and digging a tunnel under the Temple Mount
, and thereby exposing Israel to terrorism.
, with the Bundesverdienstkreuz
, cross of merits first class. In 2003, the Swiss Foundation for European Awareness granted him in Zurich with the annual prize.
Damascus
Damascus , commonly known in Syria as Al Sham , and as the City of Jasmine , is the capital and the second largest city of Syria after Aleppo, both are part of the country's 14 governorates. In addition to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Damascus is a major...
, lives in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
since 1962 and, since 1976, he is a German citizen. He is a political scientist
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
and Professor of International Relations. In academia, he is known for his analysis of international relations
International relations
International relations is the study of relationships between countries, including the roles of states, inter-governmental organizations , international nongovernmental organizations , non-governmental organizations and multinational corporations...
and the introduction of Islam to the study of international conflict and of civilization. Tibi is perhaps best known for introducing the controversial concept of European Leitkultur
Leitkultur
The German language term Leitkultur is a politically controversial concept, first introduced in 1998 by the German-Arab sociologist Bassam Tibi. It can be translated as 'guiding culture' or 'leading culture', less literally as 'common culture', 'core culture' or 'basic culture'...
as well as the concept of Euroislam for the integration of Muslim immigrants in Europe. He is also the founder of Islamology as a social-scientific study of Islam and conflict in post-bipolar politics. Tibi has done research in Asian and African countries. He publishes in English, German and Arabic.
Academic career
He studied in Frankfurt am Main, obtained his Ph.D. there in 1971 and habilitated in HamburgHamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. Between 1973 and 2009, until his retirement, he was Professor for International Relations at Göttingen University. Parallel to this appointment he was from 1982 to 2000 at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
in a variety of affiliations, the latest from 1998 to 2000 as The Bosch Fellow of Harvard. Currently, he is an A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
. Tibi had eighteen visiting professorships in all continents including fellowships in Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, UC Berkeley, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, and most recently (2010) at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, Washington D.C. Tibi was visiting senior fellow at Yale University. Along his retirement in 2009, he published his major life-time book "Islam's Predicament with Cultural Modernity".
On Islam
Tibi states he is a MuslimIslam in Germany
Owing to labour migration in the 1960s and several waves of political refugees since the 1970s, Islam has become a visible religion in Germany., there are 4.3 million Muslims .Of these, 1.9 million are German citizens...
, but criticizes Islamism and advocates of "reforming" Islam.
Tibi suggests that Muslim immigrants should refrain from engaging in religious missionary activities, Dawa
Dawah
Da‘wah or Dawah usually denotes the preaching of Islam. Da‘wah literally means "issuing a summons" or "making an invitation", being the active participle of a verb meaning variously "to summon" or "to invite"...
.
On Europe
Tibi argues that racismRacism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
is a European invention, and that Europeans must overcome what he calls "Euro-arrogance" and xenophobia
Xenophobia
Xenophobia is defined as "an unreasonable fear of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange". It comes from the Greek words ξένος , meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος , meaning "fear."...
to integrate immigrants.
He criticizes European imperialism
Colonial empire
The Colonial empires were a product of the European Age of Exploration that began with a race of exploration between the then most advanced maritime powers, Portugal and Spain, in the 15th century...
, arguing that it disrupted and deformed other cultures. Acknowledging that Muslim conquerors also did some wrong, Tibi argues that at least Muslim conquests were not driven by any kind of racism, unlike the European conquests.
On Israel
Bassam Tibi has criticized the LikudLikud
Likud is the major center-right political party in Israel. It was founded in 1973 by Menachem Begin in an alliance with several right-wing and liberal parties. Likud's victory in the 1977 elections was a major turning point in the country's political history, marking the first time the left had...
party of Israel as blocking the peace process. He states that in the 1990s, the Likud adopted the "Three Nos" policy:
"No to the Palestinian State, no to dividing Jerusalem, no to returning Golan Heights to Syria.
According to Tibi, the Likud government of 1996 engaged in provoking Arabs by constructing Har Homa
Har Homa
Har Homa is a neighborhood in southern East Jerusalem, near Beit Sahour. Built on land annexed to the Jerusalem municipality by Israel after the 1967 Six-Day War, it is considered by much of the world an illegal Israeli settlement, although Israel disputes this.The neighborhood was officially...
in Arab Jerusalem
East Jerusalem
East Jerusalem or Eastern Jerusalem refer to the parts of Jerusalem captured and annexed by Jordan in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and then captured and annexed by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War...
, and digging a tunnel under the Temple Mount
Temple Mount
The Temple Mount, known in Hebrew as , and in Arabic as the Haram Ash-Sharif , is one of the most important religious sites in the Old City of Jerusalem. It has been used as a religious site for thousands of years...
, and thereby exposing Israel to terrorism.
Awards
In 1995 he was decorated by the President of Germany, Roman HerzogRoman Herzog
Roman Herzog is a German politician as a member of the Christian Democratic Union, and served as President of Germany from 1994 to 1999...
, with the Bundesverdienstkreuz
Bundesverdienstkreuz
The Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany is the only general state decoration of the Federal Republic of Germany. It has existed since 7 September 1951, and between 3,000 and 5,200 awards are given every year across all classes...
, cross of merits first class. In 2003, the Swiss Foundation for European Awareness granted him in Zurich with the annual prize.
Books in English
- The Crisis of Modern Islam: A Preindustrial Culture in the Scientific-Technological Age. Translated by Judith von Sivers. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1988.
- Islam and the Cultural Accommodation of Social Change. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990.
- Conflict and War in the Middle East: From Interstate War to New Security, new expanded ed. 1998, published in association with WCFIA/Harvard University.
- Arab Nationalism. Between Islam and the Nation-State, first ed. 1980, second ed. 1990, third expanded and revised ed. 1997, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
- The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New World Disorder. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998; updated edition 2002. ISBN 0-520-23690-4 Publisher's abstract
- Islam between Culture and Politics. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York Cambridge, Mass: Palgrave, in association with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs Harvard University, 2001. 2nd edition, 2005. ISBN 1403949905
- Crusade and Jihad: Islam and the Christian World. Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, München, Random House GmbH, 2001 ISBN 963-13-5238-2
- Political Islam, World Politics and Europe. Routledge, New York, 2008. ISBN 0415437814
- Islam’s Predicament with Cultural Modernity. Religious Reform and Cultural Change Routledge, NY and London, 2009, ISBN 978-0-415-48472-5
Articles and book chapters (selection)
- "Islam and Modern European Ideologies." International Journal of Middle East StudiesInternational Journal of Middle East StudiesThe International Journal of Middle East Studies is a scholarly journal published by the Middle East Studies Association of North America , a learned society.-See also:* Edinburgh Middle East Report* Middle East Research and Information Project...
18, no. 1 (1986): 15-29. - "The European Tradition of Human Rights and Culture of Islam." In Human Rights in Africa Cross Cultural Perspectives, ed. Abdullahi Ahmed An Na`im and Francis M. Deng, 104. Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 1990.
- "The Simultaneity of the Unsimultaneous - Old Tribes and Imposed Nation-States in the Modern Middle East." In Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East, ed. Philip S. KhouryPhilip S. KhouryPhilip S. Khoury is an historian of the Middle East, presently Associate Provost and Ford International Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . He is also Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the American University of Beirut....
and Joseph Kostiner, 127-152. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. - "Islamic Law/Shari'a, Human Rights, Universal Morality and International Relations." Human Rights QuarterlyHuman Rights QuarterlyHuman Rights Quarterly is a quarterly academic journal established in 1979 covering human rights. The journal is intended for scholars and policymakers and follows recent developments from both governments and non-governmental organizations. It includes research in policy analysis, book reviews,...
16, no. 2 (1994): 277. - "The Worldview of Sunni Arab Fundamentalists: Attitudes toward Modern Science and Technology." In Fundamentalisms and Society, ed. Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appelby, 73-102. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
- "War and Peace in Islam." In Ethics of War and Peace, ed. Terry Nardin, 128-145. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.
- "The Fundamentalist Challenge to the Secular Order in the Middle East." Fletcher Forum of World Affairs 23 (1999): 191-210.
- "Post-Bipolar Order in Crisis: The Challenge of Politicised Islam." Millennium 29, no. 3 (2000): 843-860.
- "Eurpeanizing Islam or the Islamization of Europe," in: Peter Katzenstein, ed., Religion in an Expanding Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)
- "The Totalitarianism of Jihadist Islamism and its Challenge to Europe and to Islam." in: Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, Vol. 8, No. 1, March 2007, 35–54.
- "A Migration Story: From Muslim Immigrants to European “Citizens of the Heart?“" in: Fletcher Forum of World Affairs Vol.31 (Winter 2007) 1: 191-210.
- "Euro-Islamic Religious Pluralism for Europe. An Alternative to Ethnicity and to "Multiculturalism of Fear"," in: The CurrentThe Current (Columbia University journal)The Current is a magazine of contemporary politics, culture, and Jewish affairs at Columbia University . Launched in December 2005, The Current publishes essays on a broad range of subjects, with letters to the editor, an editorial, and book reviews appearing in each issue.The Current has...
, Vol. 11 (Fall 2007) 1: 89-103. - "Islamism and Democracy: The Case of the Arab World," in: Leonard Weinberg, ed., Democratic Responses to Terrorism (New York: Routledge, 2008), 41-61.
- "Religious Extremism or Religionization of Politics? The Ideological Foundations of Political Islam", in: Hillel Frisch and Efraim Inbar, eds, Radical Islam and International Security (New York: Routledge, 2008), Chapter One, pp. 11–37, ISBN 978-0-415-44460-6.
- "The Return of the Sacred to Politics as a Constitutional Law. The Case of the Shari’atization of Politics in Islamic Civilization", in: Theoria. A Journal of Social and Political Theory, vol. 55 (April 2008), issue 115, pp. 91–119, ISSN: 0040-5817.
- "Turkey’s Islamist Danger. Islamists Approach Europe", in: Middle East Quarterly, vol. 16,1 (Winter 2009), pp. 47–54.
- "Euro-Islam: An Alternative to Islamization and Ethnicity of Fear", in: Zeyno Baran (Ed.), The Other Muslims: Moderate and Secular, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010
External links
- Homepage of Bassam Tibi
- Europeanisation, not Islamisation Bassam Tibi argues for Euro-Islam as a bridge between civilisations
- Voices on Antisemitism Interview with Bassam Tibi from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum