1111 2 3 4 ISLAM IN GLOBAL POLITICS 5111 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 Reaching beyond currently politicized scholarship to provide a unique perspective 3111 on the place of religion and culture in global and local politics, this book examines 4 the impact of Islam on ‘civilizational’ relations between different groups and 5 polities. 6 Bassam Tibi takes a highly original approach to the topic of religion in world 7 politics, exploring the place of Islam in society and its frequent distortion in 8111 world politics to the more radical Islamism. Looking at how this becomes an 9 immediate source of tension and conflict between the secular and the religious, 20111 Tibi rejects the ‘clash of civilizations’ theory and argues for the revival of Islamic 1 humanism to help bridge the gap. Chapters expand on: 2 3 (cid:129) intercivilizational conflict in global politics; 4 (cid:129) dialogue between religious and secular, East and West; 5 (cid:129) Western concepts of Islamism; 6 (cid:129) Euro-Islam and the Islamic diaspora in Europe; 7 (cid:129) Islamic humanism as a tool for bridging civilizations. 8 9 Shedding new light on the highly topical subject of Islam in politics and society, 30111 this book is an essential read for scholars and students of international politics, Islamic 1 studies and conflict resolution. 2 3 Bassam Tibiis a Professor Emeritus of International Relations. Between 1973 and 4 2009 he taught at the University of Goettingen, and he was A.D. White Professor 35 at Large at Cornell University until 2010. Between 1982 and 2000 Professor Tibi 6 was parallel to Goettingen at Harvard University in a variety of affiliations, the latest 7 of which is the Bosch Fellow of Harvard. In his 40-year-long academic career he 8 had eighteen visiting tenures in the US, North and West Africa and Southeast Asia. 9 His work has been translated into sixteen languages, and he has published a great 40111 number of books including Islam’s Predicament with Modernity (Routledge, 2009) and 1 Islam,World Politics and Europe (Routledge, 2008) as well as Islamism and Islam(Yale 2 UP, 2012). The president of Germany Roman Herzog decorated him in 1995 with 3 the Cross of Merits/first class, the highest Medal/State Decoration, for his ‘bridging 41111 between Islam and the West’. 1111 2 3 4 ISLAM IN GLOBAL 5111 6 POLITICS 7 8 9 1011 Conflict and cross- 1 2 civilizational bridging 3111 4 5 Bassam Tibi 6 7 8111 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 35 6 7 8 9 40111 1 2 3 41111 First published 2012 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business © 2012 Bassam Tibi The right of Bassam Tibi to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Tibi, Bassam. Islam in global politics: conflict and cross-civilizational bridging/ Bassam Tibi. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Islam and world politics. 2. Culture conflict – Religious aspects – Islam. 3. Islam and humanism. 4. Islamic countries – Relations – Europe 5. Europe – Relations – Islamic countries. 6. Islamic countries – Relations – Western countries. 7. Western countries – Relations – Islamic countries I. Title. BP173.5.T53 2011 303.48′2176704–dc23 2011017348 ISBN 978–0–415–68624–2 (hbk) ISBN 978–0–415–68625–9 (pbk) ISBN 978–0–203–80202–1 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo and Stone Sans by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon 1111 2 3 4 CONTENTS 5111 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8111 Preface vii 9 20111 1 Intercivilizational value-conflicts and bridging in the 1 pursuit of post-bipolar peace 1 2 3 2 Intercultural dialogue as a global communication in pursuit 4 of bridging: cultural particularisms and value-conflicts among 5 the civilizations 31 6 7 3 The new intercivilizational Cold War of ideas and alternatives 8 to it 55 9 4 Which Islam for bridging? The heterogeneity of civilizations 30111 as a background for the plea to revive the grammar of Islamic 1 humanism 85 2 3 5 Euro-Islam as a vision for bridging: a liberal and secular Islam 4 for the Islamic diaspora in Europe 111 35 6 Intercivilizational conflict, bridging and critical theory: 6 the Western Third World-ist romanticization of Islamism 7 and beyond 140 8 9 7 From conflict to bridgings: conclusions 161 40111 1 2 Notes 176 3 Bibliography 205 41111 Index 216 1111 2 3 4 PREFACE 5111 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8111 The following pages unite seven heavily revised papers into a book of Islamology. 9 What is the distinction between this approach and traditional Islamic studies? With 20111 a retrospective look at the past forty years of scholarship on the place of Islam in 1 society and politics, as well as Islam’s role as a cultural system in social and political 2 change, I claim to have established a new field of study for which I have chosen 3 the name: Islamology. However, the story of this engagement is much longer than 4 the academic part of my study of Islam. It is the story of my life since my birth as 5 a Muslim in Damascus in 1944. I was socialized in my family and educated at school 6 in the related value system of Islam. In 1962 I went to Frankfurt and was fortunate 7 to study with Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer. In my academic career 8 I engaged in the daring venture of deviating from traditional wisdoms of established 9 scholarship and paid for it dearly. In the course of my study of Islam my work 30111 received praise from some but, in contrast, it was tarnished, even subjected to 1 defamations such as the accusation of ‘Islam-bashing’ and ‘self-orientalization’ as 2 well as the use of other similar defamatory clichés alien to an academic culture of 3 free debate and civility. It is intriguing to see some ideologically blinkered Western 4 scholars siding with Islamists in these actions. The two books with which I end 35 my academic career are this one, Islam in Global Politics, followed by Islamism and 6 Islam(Yale University Press, 2012, forthcoming). Both were born in this charged 7 atmosphere of politicized scholarship. 8 Some scholars believe that communism is being replaced by Islam in the new 9 post-bipolar patterns of conflict in world politics. Originating from the Left, I go 40111 beyond the deplored politicization of scholarship and acknowledge the place of 1 culture, religion and ethnicity in contemporary conflict studies, but with a grasp 2 of related reality, which is different from established schools of thought. I am an 3 International Relations scholar who wants to be free from the obsession with realism 41111 and neo-realism. Throughout the process of learning that is the background for viii Preface establishing Islamology, I engaged in studying Islam in the way reflected in the seven chapters of the present book. In view of my intention to end the scholarly part of my life with this book I acknowledge its special place. The radical shift that I underwent from socialization in an Islamic value system in Damascus to a new life and new thinking in Frankfurt, is a telling story. In the late 1960s I joined the student revolt in Frankfurt, parallel to an exposure to the critical Marxism of the Frankfurt School (Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer and Jürgen Habermas). In the context of this radical shift I switched from the conservative–traditional Islam that I had internalized in Damascus to the Marxist critical theory that I adopted in the course of my academic training in Frankfurt. This change in thinking I maintained from 1962 to 1975, ending with the publication of my Marxism inspired Handbuch der Unterentwicklung (‘Handbook of Underdevelopment’) that I co-edited with the German Marxist Volkhard Brandes. That handbook was published in the book series Political Economy. From this background I turned to study Islam under the impact of the Durkheimian sociology of religion that views religion as ‘fait social’, that is as a social reality. In this context I recognized the tensions between the Islamic values and those of secular European Enlightenment labelled as cultural modernity. The tensions between the two value systems are not merely related to an academic inquiry, but to the lives of those Muslims that oscillate between both. The Crisis of Modern Islam is the title of the 1981 book that I published first in German and thereafter in an English (Utah University Press, 1988) edition. In that book I sowed the seeds for the study of the intercivilizational conflict not only in individual lives, but also in world politics. This venture has shaped my scholarly work ever since. The present book is the culmination of four decades as a university professor and a three-decades-long process of reasoning and research in Islamology (1980–2010). In short, Islamology is a social–scientific study of Islam and conflict, not of the scriptural faith of Islam and its practices, a field that I leave to scholars of the divinities and to anthropologists. The present book unites my unpublished research papers on the subject matter in point, after radical rewriting and numerous revisions, to fit them into an integrated study that revolves around the theme of intercivilizational conflict. I study this conflict in the spirit of dialogue in the pursuit of bridging between civilizations as a peace strategy for the twenty-first century. In fact, this book is a collection of essays, rewritten to make them resemble a monograph. I may not have been successful in this pursuit, but I assure my reader that I did my best. I cut repetitions and overlapping phrases, but some of these remain and they may betray the origin of these chapters. I did my best to limit this as far as possible. I leave it to the readers to find out how successful this endeavour has been, while I remind them of the rule that an established scholar has the right to collect together his or her writings toward the end of an academic career. On top of my scholarly aims, my intention is to establish a dissociation between analysis of the intercivilizational conflict in world politics and any ‘Huntington - Preface ix 1111 ization’ of the issue, in which conflict is viewed through the late Samuel 2 Huntington’s rhetoric as a Clash of Civilizations. I argue against this view that a 3 conflict is not a clash and hence avoid any polarization. In addition, I ascertain 4 that no singling out of Islam is implied in the present analysis. The argument is 5111 that next to the West Islam is the only civilization that raises claims to universality. 6 In contemporary history Islamism politicizes those claims in a strategy for a 7 remaking of the world along a new interpretation of the related, mostly constructed, 8 civilizational concepts. These claims are marked by a lack of pluralism. The new 9 quest for a new world order is not only a counter-enlightenment but also a counter 1011 to pluralism. As a Muslim I know that the new Islamist International Relations 1 language does not exist in classical Islamic doctrine and that Islamism is based on 2 an invention of tradition. Neither the concept of an ‘Islamic state’, nor the concept 3111 of a world order exist in Islamic heritage. These constructions rather reflect a new 4 Islamist ideology that fuels the intercivilizational conflict. Hence, the distinction 5 between Islam and Islamism matters significantly to avoid any Islam-bashing. I refer 6 in this context to the book Islamism and Islam that follows this one as it accounts 7 in all details and on all levels for the distinction pointed at. That book was completed 8111 during my Yale tenure 2008/2009 and is due to be published by Yale University 9 Press in spring 2012. The ideology of Islamism that determines the politics of Islamist 20111 movements fuels an intercivilizational conflict. The Islamist New Internationalism 1 emerges from the politicization of Islamic universalism. This reference not only 2 reflects the continuity of my work, but also serves as the foundation for two different 3 books, even though they relate to one another in a chain of research and scholarship. 4 The major theme of the research papers united in a new shape in the present 5 book is the study of civilizations with a focus on intercivilizational conflict. While 6 this inquiry – as already mentioned – dismisses the clash rhetoric of the late 7 Huntington it leans on classic and modern authorities. For me, Ibn Khaldun of 8 the fourteenth century, author of Muqaddima (‘Prolegomena’) and Raymond Aron 9 of the twentieth century (his Paix et Guerre entre les Nations) are among these 30111 authorities. Methodologically my work is close to historical sociology, as the present 1 study views Islam and its civilization through a reasoning in which Islam is placed 2 into an overall historical context beyond the existing claims to absolutism. True, 3 I refer in Chapter 1 to some topicalities such as the transition in the US adminis - 4 tration from a damaging polarization (G.W. Bush) to one of superficial bridging 35 (Barack Obama). However, these references serve merely as a way to illustrate the 6 issue. To be sure, this is not a book on US politics, nor is it restricted to the Middle 7 East. It is based on a generalist approach to the study of contemporary Islamic 8 civilization. Admittedly, only in one case the book refers to a concrete issue area: 9 Islamic migration to Europe and the related conflicts. I cover this in Chapter 5 on 40111 European Islam not only because I live as a Muslim immigrant in Europe, but also 1 because I share Francis Fukuyama’s views expressed in his Lipset lecture, in which 2 he argues that Europe has become ‘the battlefront in the struggle between radical 3 Islamism and liberal democracy’. However, unlike Fukuyama, I do not restrict this 41111 matter to an ‘identity politics’, but rather see herein an intercivilizational conflict. x Preface In contemp orary history Islamism revives – in, as Hobsbawm expressed it, an invention of tradition – collective memories of past Islamic glory to claim a return of history. In short: this book goes beyond those obsessions that prevail in the US, be it in the media, in scholarship or in politics. Do not be mistaken: Islam is not to be confused with ‘Middle East politics’; it is about world history and world politics. The number of non-Middle Eastern Muslims in the world at large exceeds that of all Middle-Easterners – Arabs, Turks and Iranians – put together. Transnational Islamism is poised to restore an imagined Islamic glory in a danger- ous dream of the return of history. The structure of the present book reflects an effort at disenchantment and a demystification of that dream. In Chapter 1 I spell out what the notion of intercivilizational conflict means. Then in Chapter 2 I look for ways of conflict resolution and focus on global communication. Hereby I cons ider the intercivilizational dialogue as an avenue for bridging. Unlike the sociologist Niklas Luhmann who – in his system theory – puts the existing inter- connectedness and international communication on an equal footing, I see in that chapter a simultaneity of globalization and fragmentation. This simultaneity under - girds conflict. I acknowledge that each civilization has its own value system that separates it from others, and infer that global communication between civilizations is underpinned by particular values. Hence, the need for a consensus over universal values. If this is missing, conflict looms. I argue that cross-cultural morality connects and dismisses the argument that global communication in itself leads to connected- ness. Cultural fragmentation is a source of conflict. In the third chapter I look at one dimension of the intercivilizational conflict carried out as a war of ideas. This is followed by an inquiry into the potential of a ‘peace’ of ideas in Chapter 4. The related insights lead to the theme of humanism. I argue that the heritage of Islam includes a tradition of humanism that was buried in the past by Islamic fiqh-orthodoxy, and it is suppressed at present by Islamism. In Chapter 5 I move to a concrete case, that is, to the theme of Islam in Europe. True, Islam and Europe have a long history both of conflict and of cross-cultural fertilization, but Islam in Europe is a contemporary history that relates to global migration. Thus, there is a great distinction between the two themes, Islam ‘and’ Europe; Islam ‘in’ Europe. In our time Islam has become a segment of Europe itself. In a project at Cornell University on ‘Religion in an expanding Europe’, I coined the phrase ‘Europeanization of Islam or Islamization of Europe’ as a way of depicting the conflicting options for Europe’s future. The envisioned European- ization of Islam (Euro-Islam) is an effort at bridging to counter what I have termed in a Stanford University based project, ‘ethnicity of fear’. This fear grows from an intercivilizational conflict and the ethnicization of the Islamic diaspora in a counter- culture of parallel societies. A Europeanization of Islam would be a bridge and also a resolution of a conflict Europeans are reluctant to acknowledge, and therefore it is the better option with which this book sides. In Chapter 6 I come back to the significant distinction between Islam and Islamism to ask the most sensitive question: why does the Left in the West – as well as some liberals – of today support the right-wing ideology of Islamism? Preface xi 1111 The chapter unveils a sentiment related to a new variety of uninformed Western 2 Third World-ism as a romanticization of the cultural other in terms of bon sauvage. 3 The chapter makes it clear that Islamism is neither a theology of liberation nor 4 of anti-globalization. This is Western wishful thinking. Chapter 7 includes the 5111 conclusion and a summary of my thinking about civilization, conflict and peace. 6 It originates from a keynote address to an intercivilizational dialogue held in 7 Seoul/Korea, December 2009. To be sure, this book provides an analysis and aims 8 at an enlightenm ent – not a demonization – about Islamism. I acknowledge the 9 signifi cance of Islamist opposition and argue for an engagement, but warn at the 1011 same time of a self-defeating empowerment of Islamist movements. 1 The list of people who supported my Islam research in the past four decades 2 1970–2010 is long and therefore I decline from adding a lengthy acknowledgement. 3111 One can find such a list in my three most recent books published 2008 and 2009 4 by Routledge and extensively in my book of 2012 to be published by Yale 5 University Press. The only people I would like to thank by name are my staff 6 assistant Elisabeth Luft, who helped (for a full decade, 2000–09) to transfer my 7 research from repeat edly handwritten manuscripts (I am a pre-computer age writer) 8111 into clean, arduously and meticulously typed, chapters. In the two years ensuing 9 my mandatory retirement 2009–11, the most important associate in my scholarly 20111 life has been my Ph.D. student and research assistant Thorsten Hasche. Earlier 1 he worked closely with Elisabeth Luft assisting with several book projects; after 2 my retirement Thorsten’s assistance has been essential for the completion of this 3 final draft. I also need to express my great gratitude to Joe Whiting. In close 4 cooperation with Joe this is the third book I have published with Routledge. Two 5 very fine ladies, Emma Hart at Routledge and Charlotte Hiorns at Florence 6 Production, did a great job in the final copy-editing and production of this book, 7 and therefore deserve to share this warmest gratitude. 8 With this book I end my forty-year-long academic career and leave the stage. 9 I do this after teaching and lecturing in all five continents of the world and after 30111 the publication of a voluminous work written in Arabic, German and English that 1 is translated into eighteen languages. In awareness that some dispute my work I 2 leave it to history to assess this Arab–Islamic thinking that claims to be both 3 enlightened and reform oriented. My reasoning about Islam and its civilization in 4 a time span of forty years is based on the hope that ‘Islamic revivalism’ means a 35 revival of the heritage of the Islamic rationalism of al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes 6 and Ibn Khaldun, and is not to be confused with the political religion of Islamism 7 and its drive for a shari’a state. Also with regard to this point this book differs from 8 the understanding of ‘revivalism’ in many established Islamic studies. The invention 9 of tradition by Islamism is no Islamic revival. 40111 1 Vienna/Austria 2 February 2011 3 Bassam Tibi 41111