Bassam Tibi
Bassam Tibi (Arabic بسام طيبي, DMG Bassam Tibi; Full name:. Bassam Muhammad b Taisir Banu aṭ - Tibi, born April 4, 1944 in Damascus ) is a German political scientist. He is of Syrian origin and German citizen since 1976. From 1973 to 2009 he was Professor of International Relations at the Georg -August- University Göttingen, also AD White professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York by 2010, and in the academic year 2008/ 09 Senior Research Fellow at Yale University, USA.
Bassam Tibi, co-founder of the al - al - ʿ Munaẓẓama arabiyya li - al - Insan ḥuqūq / المنظمة العربية لحقوق الإنسان /, Arab Organization for Human Rights ', also bears the " Cordoba trialogue " for Jewish- Christian-Muslim dialogue with. He is a harsh critic of Islamism and of traditional Islam and demanded religious reforms and acceptance of a synthesis of European values and Islam ( Euro -Islam ).
Life and work
Bassam Tibi is from one of the oldest Muslim scholars families ( Banu al - Tibi ) of Damascus, is an avowed Muslim and Hafiz, 1962, to Germany and studied social science, philosophy - among other things with Max Horkheimer - and history at the University of Frankfurt am Main, where he gained his doctorate in 1971. He habilitated in 1981 at the University of Hamburg.
In addition to his professorship at Göttingen, he was a Visiting Scholar and Research Associate at Harvard University (1982-1993) and there also a visiting professor of Bosch 1998 to 2000. During the academic year 2003/ 2004 he was Visiting Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of St. Gallen and in fall 2003 visiting Professor at the Islamic University of Jakarta in Indonesia. Since 2004 he has A.D. White Professor - at-Large at Cornell University, previously he worked as Erma O'Brien Distinguished Professor at the European Union Center, California, Scripps College and teaches a course every year since 2006 for Islamic Studies at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna.
From 1986 to 1988 he held visiting professorships had several times the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD ) in Asia and Africa, including in Khartoum in Sudan and in Yaoundé in Cameroon. He had a Harvard Fellowship and more in Princeton and Ann Arbor ( Michigan). From 1989 to 1993 he was a member of the "Fundamentalism Project " of the " American Academy of Arts and Sciences ". Tibi 1994, a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and 1995 and 1998 at Bilkent University in Ankara. He is currently a member of the Culture Matters project at the Harvard Academy for International Studies and the Fletcher School at Tufts University.
Bassam Tibi in 1995 awarded the Federal Cross of Merit, First Class, and elected in 1997 from the " Biographical American Institute " Man of the Year. In 2003 he received together with the Jewish Professor Michael Wolff son the annual prize of the " Foundation of Western consciousness " ( Zurich ) for his commitment to European values .
His wife, Ursula (nee Helwig ) was a teacher at the Scholl Gesamtschule (Göttingen).
Positions
As part of its peripheral journalistic creativity Tibi coined several terms or influenced, including defining culture, parallel society, Euro -Islam and " Sharia Islam". In his theory of the dream of half the Modern, a critical analysis of the development trends of Islamic civilization, he distinguishes two aspects: first, the institutional modernity, which science and technology and traditional areas of life be filled, and for other cultural modernity, which for liberal core values , human rights, democratization and equality stand. Half the Modern was therefore a partial modernization through acquisition of instruments, especially in the fields of science and technology with simultaneous rejection of cultural modernity, ie the values and world view of the modern world.
Given Extending well Islamist currents demanded Tibi in 1998 in his book "Europe without identity " "European culture" and introduced this term in the context of the discussion on the integration of migrants in Germany against a wertebeliebigen multiculturalism into the field, even to the progressive formation of parallel societies counteract. In this context, includes his claim that immigrants in European countries Muslims have the respective legal and constitutional systems of their host countries respect. Tibi designs for this purpose the vision of a Euro -Islam. From the concept of a " German culture" but he distanced himself.
In his published in 2005 and 2007 expanded work " The headscarf to Europe? " Marked Tibi significant reservations about EU membership of Turkey, which he has not seen in the current Constitution under AKP leadership on the way into the European community of values. The represented a clear majority in the Turkish parliament party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will indeed represented by their leading representatives as Islamic - conservative, but in reality pursue Islamist goals. Proof of this was the increasing uniformity of women under the headscarf that no longer primarily about perfect folk customs expressions, but increasingly touted as Islamist recognition of belonging and will demanded. In addition promotes Erdoğan government İmam Hatip schools as competition to the Kemalist secular state schools. Both approaches would in particular also exported to the Turkish migrant communities in Germany and promoted there training Islamist embossed parallel societies that put the Sharia ( law of God ) on the relevant state law. With the accession of Turkey to the EU under the present conditions, therefore, for Tibi combines the danger of a march capped Islamists by the European institutions. This Islamism had the old members to oppose because of its multicultural orientation and tolerance to broad concept little. However, Tibi rejects a future EU membership for Turkey does not flatly. His criterion is the full integration and acceptance of Turkish migrants in Germany. To the success of which would have both sides to join forces contribute by themselves from their previous line: on the one hand the time being negligent disinterested German civil society, on the other, which in turn have little constructive acting politically and socially formative forces in Turkey. Sharia Islam and headscarf - uniformity in any case are downright counter- indicators to be aimed at the integration process for Tibi. In the success case, the integration process by Tibi would be very well suited to show that Turkey could exercise their so far only been covered bridge function to other Islamic societies of Europe. This will, however, probably can be cross-checked in a longer than that now for the accession process targeted period, if only because Tibi meanwhile recognizes rather cumbersome trends and shows.
In 2006, he announced his intention to leave Germany after his retirement in 2009 and future teach at Cornell University, where he as AD White Professor - at-Large worked. , But this revoked in 2008 compared to the Hannover Allgemeine Zeitung and has decided to remain in Germany.
The historian Gazi Çağlar throws Tibi affinity for conservative positions before - Tibi imagine a civilization paradigm, remember its historical and philosophical basis of Oswald Spengler and Arnold J. Toynbee. In the book war of civilizations. Politics and religion between reason and fundamentalism Tibi follow the theory of Samuel Huntington's clash of civilizations. Nevertheless, Tibi distances in the same book (chapter 7) of Huntington's interpretation approaches.