Bassam Tibi was born in Syria and now lives in Germany. He remains a Muslim, but has come to adopt “European” values, which he feels no longer survive in Europe.
The article was originally in German before showing up in J-P in Danish. Here’s Kepiblanc’s prefatory note:
His ideas aren’t very clear to me. But maybe that’s due to the journalist from Jyllands-Posten — who knows? — I have not been able to find the original installment in German.
Considering the discussion on the very elusive ‘moderate Muslim’ it may be worth the effort to publish this in order to get some opinions from the readers and commenters here.
My own first response is: if he admires European culture (Leitkultur) how on earth can he still be a Muslim???
And now the article itself:
German Intellectuals Betray Europe- - - - - - - - - -
Bassam Tibi is Germany’s most renowned expert on Islam and the inventor of the term “European Leader-Culture” [German: Leitkultur, a common term in Germany — tranlator]. In this installment he explains his decision to leave Germany.Germany’s intellectuals are leaving Europe. I say that as an Arab who came to Germany from the Islamic Orient — loaded with admiration. Not as a guest worker, but as a descendant of one of the oldest aristocratic families in Damascus and having the good fortune of being able to study in Frankfurt with two survivors of the Holocaust, Horkheimer and Adorno. Here I adopted a European mindset, something which no longer exists in contemporary Germany.
It was Max Horkheimer who taught me to acknowledge Europe as “an island — in space and time — in an ocean of despots “ I was impressed with Horkheimer’s request not only to be critical towards Europe, but to defend it against any form of totalitarianism as well: “It is right and a duty for every thinking man”. I miss that spirit in Germany today.
When Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh — being accused of non-belief — was executed in the streets of Amsterdam by a global network of Islamists (not a solo perpetrator, as German cultural authors so claiming reported) his executioner stabbed a note onto his body with a warning: “Europe, it’s your turn now”.
The whole of Dutch society woke up and changed its prior ethics of multiculture and tolerance. And in Germany?
One year after the murder of Theo van Gogh the Dutch government took over the presidency of the EU and at the occasion asked the Nexus-Institute to sponsor a research project titled “Europe — A Beautiful Idea?”
I was hired to take part in that project, and my task was to figure out what was needed within the framework of a more European version of Islam, in order to make European ideals more digestible to Muslims. Horkheimer had told me that the idea of Europe is based upon a perception of man as a citoyen (not in the narrow judicial meaning of the word “state citizen” or passport owner).
A citoyen is a member of a values-based community, and thus independent from religion and ethnic heritage.
In that respect I perceived myself as a German citizen and a European. My old Jewish friend Dan Diner used to taunt me with the words: “You can’t become a German, because here the citizen is substantial”.
Only after 44 years in Germany have I started to realize that the country of poets and thinkers — and especially its intellectuals — is an ethnically-exclusive club with no room for us foreigners.
The German press accuses me of being “hard to integrate”.
Is it true?
Am I a difficult, unique case? — My problem is that I believe in the European idea and take it very seriously.
To me free thinking is a blessing to the cultural modernists — and not negotiable.
Out of this the German intellectuals create a postmodern censorship and denial of the works of inconvenient dissidents. Journalists accuse me of being semi-scientific and others ignore my publications.
My books on the Islamic and Islamistic challenge which Europe faces aren’t read anymore because the cultural writers suppress them.
Just like the citizen only exists within the law, so does German freedom of thinking only exist on paper, not within the political culture.
In this respect I’ll tell two little stories: In Switzerland they have an institution that honors whomever defends European values. In 2003 they chose a European Jew, Michael Wolffsohn, and a European Muslim, Bassam Tibi, unable to find an ethnic European who did so.
One year later — as part of the project “Europe — A Beautiful Idea?” — European intellectuals were asked if they were prepared to sacrifice themselves for Europe.
Nobody answered ‘yes’ but the Jewish Holocaust-survivor Fritz Stern and the Arabian immigrant Bassam Tibi.
Since the 1980’s I’ve been fighting for cultural integration (not assimilation), since 1992 for a European Islam and since 1998 for a European leading-culture [Leitkultur].
The term “leading-culture” was adopted by politicians from CDU, and after that was considered politically incorrect, and perhaps now I’m — at the Integration Summit with minister of the interior, Wolfgang Schaeuble of the CDU — persona non grata.
It was I who founded Islamology as a study at the University of Goettingen, and now it is being shut down with the approval of state governor Christian Wulff.
Those CDU-politicians aren’t better then the leftist intellectuals who silenced me as an author. I was the first Muslim to get appointed to CDU’s Commission on Values. After a few disappointing experiences I wrote a letter of resignation to chancellor Merkel.
Is it really true that not only am I hard to integrate, but ungrateful as well? I’m grateful for my job and the protection given to me by my German passport towards my totalitarian native country, Syria. But is that the only dream of a citizen? As a citizen I want to belong to a society, get a cultural membership without denying my many identities, and not die as a stranger “with immigrant background”.
We strangers, whether professors or unskilled workers are, however, always outside the door in Germany. Defenseless toward our enemies, defiant towards our friends: that’s not what Europe promised.* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The author is professor of international relations at the Georg-August University in Goettingen, Germany. His latest book Mit dem Kopftuch nach Europa? — Die Turkei auf dem Weg in die Europaeische Union (Towards Europe with the headscarf? — Turkey on the Road to the European Union) has been published by German publisher Primus.
13 comments:
yawn
you euros are just silly commies
(scrilla--
I do hope your flippant dismissal is meant to be some kind of ironic statement that I am not subtle enough to understand.
On its face, "you euros are just silly commies" is -- at best -- ignorant. But then maybe it's my shallow American mind and I don't grok your deep thinking here.)
______
This is sad, but not unusual. Like the Jews who were the foundation of German universities between the wars, Bassam Tibi thought his native aristocracy in Syria would somehow allow him to integrate into German intellectual culture.
Wrong. And don't try it in France, either. It is interesting that these two cultures, the Germans and the French, put up such barriers to foreigners and then wonder why they continue to fall behind the rest of the world.
Perhaps Mr. Bibi will go to Switzerland, where he seems to be appreciated. Wherever he goes, leaving Germany is a good idea. It is toxic to live in an environment of arrogance.
phanarath--
read the post more closely. He says:
Out of this the German intellectuals create a postmodern censorship and denial of the works of inconvenient dissidents. Journalists accuse me of being semi-scientific and others ignore my publications.
My books on the Islamic and Islamistic challenge which Europe faces aren’t read anymore because the cultural writers suppress them.
Just like the citizen only exists within the law, so does German freedom of thinking only exist on paper, not within the political culture.
He goes on to say that
In this respect I’ll tell two little stories: In Switzerland they have an institution that honors whomever defends European values. In 2003 they chose a European Jew, Michael Wolffsohn, and a European Muslim, Bassam Tibi, unable to find an ethnic European who did so.
One year later — as part of the project “Europe — A Beautiful Idea?” — European intellectuals were asked if they were prepared to sacrifice themselves for Europe.
Nobody answered ‘yes’ but the Jewish Holocaust-survivor Fritz Stern and the Arabian immigrant Bassam Tibi.
Europeans in general are not used to *integrating* strangers. It is not called "the old country" by Americans for nothing.
I think he will be welcome in Switzerland, and perhaps his academic writing will not be supressed.
If not, there are plenty of "new" countries where he would be welcome. Countries settled by Europeans who found Europe stultifying.
He was not looking at history and culture very closely, I will grant that. If he had been, he'd not have chosen Europe, especially the continent. They don't even like or accept each other, even after all these millenia.
Benjamin Franklin famously said to his Founding Brothers that they'd better hang together or they'd all hang separately. And so the quarreling colonies managed to do that...
Meanwhile Europe continued its bloody internecine wars and conquests.
I think Mr. Bibi's conclusions are sad and correct. He needs a watch and a suitcase because it's time to go...
Dymphna, did you even read the article ?
Since the 1980’s I’ve been fighting for cultural integration (not assimilation), since 1992 for a European Islam and since 1998 for a European leading-culture
Wait wait, I think the above phrase of Tibis shows the problem in a nutshell. Hes being trying to push his values, and the eeeevil German intellectuals reject the little Islamoid who demands to live fat in their country but only on his own terms..
It was Max Horkheimer who taught me to acknowledge Europe as “an island —
...study in Frankfurt with two survivors of the Holocaust, Horkheimer and Adorno
Horkheimer??? Adorno??? Charter members of the Frankfurt School of Cultural Marxism! They surived the holocaust by spening the whole war living in America and helping poison Columbia university (Hitler closed the Frankfurt School in 33). Tibi is not an "intellectual", he is quite literally a marxist, a card carrying unrepentant marxist. Check out some of his written works ("Critical studies").
He is shocked, shocked, that Germani intellectuals do not accept some foreigner who demands that Germany be abolished so that he feels comfortable. Tibi came to find marxist Eutopia. When Tibi says "German Intellectuals Betray Europe" he means they reject the nation killing multicultural and cultural relativism.
Tibi as much as anyone thoroughly deserves an unfortunate encounter with the Consdaple kids.
Its a great article. Its common opinion that Europe has been betrayed by our elites, but Tibi claims otherwise. Grand.
Maybe this character should immigrate to the US, he could get tenure alongside Ward Churchill.
"It is toxic to live in an environment of arrogance." Who is more arrogant? What right does Tibi have to demand that he be accepted into a culture that is not his? Citizenship is a political creation. Politicians can hand out passports all day long, but cultural belonging is something much deeper - perhaps even unexplainable. It is passed down from generation to generation. We model out parents and our grandparents and we find belonging with others who do the same. You can't hand this out. You can't come from foreign parents - from a foreign culture - and expect to be accepted. The most that any immigrant (without intermarrying and completely giving up their own culture) can hope for is mutual appreciation and respect. Granted Tibi is different because unlike most of the foreigners in Germany he does warrant respect and intellection appreciation. BUT he is not German, and he should have never expected to become German If he really wants to embrace Germany, he should (1) realize that he himself will never be German, and (2) push his children to marry Germans and give up any connection to their prior FOREIGN culture. That is integration.
Before everyone decides that the paragraph above is arrogant or perhaps even racist itself, I think you should reflect on what any other type of "integration" would mean. Should there really be a single EU identity to which anyone can belong? Its like saying that having distinct and separate food or drink is a bad thing. So you take the spaghetti, the burritos, the kebabs, the spaetzle and you just though it all together and mix it up. You end up with a disgusting mess! Should a burrito think that he has a right to be excepted and treated like spaghetti? Really? Take anything you want. Words, colors...even people. Mix everything together and you will end up with mush, with crap.
The countries and cultures in Europe should stay separate. The people should feel complete love for their own culture and should respect and appreciate other cultures. But for all of those sitting around waiting to be accepted by a host culture, they should either realize that they are guests, or they should leave. If I go to Italy (which I love to do!) I don't expect to be treated as an Italian. Its not my land. Its not my culture. Even if I stayed there for 60 years, it would still belong to Italians. This recognition is in itself respect. But if I came to Italy and called it my own and demanded that they seem me as and treat me as an Italian...Well this is nothing but arrogant and blatant disrespect for the culture that I say I love. Tibi has done exactly this. He has said he respect Germany, wants to belong, etc. Good for him. But he lies to himself. If he really loved Germany, its people, its culture, he would be grateful to Germans (as I am to Italians) for letting him stay a while. He would not demand being an equal in a foreign land, but he would humble himself. He would try to teach and try equally to learn. He would try to foster mutual understanding, but he would never, never forget that he is living in another people's land and that his little passport cannot change that fact.
okay, guys, you win. I stand corrected.
I had in mind, when I read him, what the historian Hughes (can't remember his first name) charted what he laid out what he called "the great sea change" in American life when we granted asylum to so many Europeans fleeing the war.
Yes, there were bad apples in the bunch, but there was also Karen Horney in NY, and Einstein at Princeton, and Viktor Frankl, just to name a few.
In my deliberate ignorance I have tried to avoid reading about the Frankfurt School...and it always seemed to me that the native-born fellow-travelers in this country made it touch and go for awhile re homemade Communism. They sure did undermine us.
So...anyway, I stand corrected. But he still oughta go to Switzerland where he seems to feel he'll be welcome. I must look up that group that gave him the award.
Sounds like a Ramadan to me but I would have to peruse his books to be certain. Lots of double talk in my opinion. There is no EuroIslam, just like there isn't a peaceful Islam.
Switzerland is of course not a part of the European Union. A little googling reveals the prize is awarded by the "Stiftung für Abendländische Besinnung", an almost untranslatable organization of such influnce that it has neither home page, nor even a wikipedia entry. Congratulations to Mr Tibi for this outstanding honor, of which no European is worthy.
Bah, I'm slow.
I just realized where I'd seen the name of "holocaust survivor" Fritz Stern before. Emigrated from Germany in 1938, educated at Columbia late 40's (which makes him probable student of the Frankfurt crew) then taught at Columbia for 40 years. AFAIK Stern is a US citizen, I have no idea in what circumstances Tibi understood Stern's readiness to sacrifice himself for Europe (Most Europeans would quite rightly not sacrifice themselves for the "idea of Europe", we are citizens of perfectly good countries and not citizens of the EUSSR). All that is odd since Stern certainly was never ready to sacrifice himslef for America, being of an age for both WWII and Korea, and coming out against Vietnam.
Stern is apparently liberal but not shrieking marxist, he does however stand out with his warning about the fascist threat to America posed by the Christian right.
Oooo ... scary.
As I said after translating this article, Tibi's ideas were unclear to me. I couldn't help feeling a strange "schadenfreude" learning that the German 'intelligentsia' is a bit reluctant to accept his Euro-Islamic admiration. The comment by Namenlos - who I presume is a German - confirm that. A skeptical attitude towards everything Muslim is healthy, so maybe there's hope for Germany after all. And the comments from Phanarath and Fellow Peacekeeper affirm my suspicion : what Tibi is talking about is the new EU-Constitution with its unholy mix of Soviet-era socialism and Sharia law. I - like any other European - would certainly not die for that 20007-version of Dante's Hell.
Of course he's right: he cannot become German. The nations of Europe are, by and large, ethnarchies, not mere political entities. Tibi's is a sad story indeed but one that is all too predictable. Europeans need to admit to themselves and to their immigrants that Europe is a collection of ethnic groups that is essentially closed to outsiders, especially non-white, non-Christian foreigners with no ethnic (blood) ties to the motherland.
It's not that Europeans don't assimilate any outsiders; it's that they won't assimilate outsiders who are ethnically alien to the mother culture. T.S. Eliot, from Missouri, became British. Julian Green's parents fled the Confederacy to France. Green, though not a French citizen, was considered so French that he was elected to the Academie francaise. Edmund Jabes was born in Egypt of Italian descent and became as French as Sartre. Samuel Beckett, as Irish as whiskey, was also considered as French as champagne. The list goes on and on.
But these were all men of European heritage, culturally, religiously, and ethnically. If the Germans won't accept Tibi then they need to admit that they will not accept millions of Turks and Arabs as German no matter how well they learn the language or adopt the culture.
If the English are still bigoted against Scots and Welsh, who really thinks that they accept Arabs and Pakistanis are being British? They don't but they are too polite (scared, browbeaten) to say so in public.
As Bela Lugosi said in the original Dracula, "The blood is the life." Deep down, under all the socialism and political BS, this is how most Europeans feel. All the rest is just posturing.
Thomas the Wraith wrote:
Of course he's right: he cannot become German. The nations of Europe are, by and large, ethnarchies, not mere political entities.
As an American I am often struck by often I hear immigrant citizens of all ethnicities talk effortlessly and honestly about "our values," meaning the values of the American revolution, the values whose fruits attracted them. We have many problems from our shockingly absent-minded immigration experiment since 1965, but much to celebrate too. As an outsider you can be American in a way that (you can never truly be European.
M. Sarkozy might be brought up as a compelling objection, but he is of Hungarian extraction; close enough, as you say. But whether Europeans can (or should) think of non-Europeans in their midst as full equals is the most important question that society faces.
I don't buy Mr. Tibi's idea that it's impossible for a non-European to get accepted here. His "Euro-Islam" is reason enough to trigger suspicion, even hostility. If it wasn't for this, he could "integrate" completely, especially if he adopted the language, the manners, the dress code etc... In short : when in Rome, do as the Romans.
I can't speak for Germany, but where I live there are only problems with Muslims. Period. All other immigrants, whether Chinese, Vietnamese, South Americans, Indians, Thais', West Indians, Christian Negroes etc... integrate within a few years as well as the Jews who are as Danish as they come. But all of them learn the language, the culture, the habits and abide the law of the land. As opposed to the Muslims. And never in my life have I heard a non-Muslim immigrant whine or complain about not being accepted here - to the contrary. Many immigrants even keep their faith like Hindus, Buddhists, Catholics and whatnot - Danes simply don't care. Religion is a non-issue here - if it wasn't for Islam.
Sarkozy is the child Hungarian immigrants and that is close enough. Put it this way - Hungary is closer geographically to Turkey than France. It has long and deep historical ties to Turkey and few such ties to France. But Sarkozy, an ethnically European Christian, can become French. I bet a French Catholic couple could move to Hungary and their children would be considered Hungarian (especially if their mother tongue was Hungarian). But Turkish Muslims aren't going to become Hungarian in one generation. Or French.
But this is true for most of the world. I can't 'become' Japanese. Ever. Under any circumstances. I can't 'become' Korean or Zulu or Thai or Maori or Nepalese. The word 'become' here has no meaning. You are born Japanese or you aren't. And that is that. But the Japanese are honest enough to let everyone know that. They discourage immigration because there is no point. It would only cause trouble and create difficult problems.
European elites, ashamed of their past and scandalized by nationalism, have repressed their ethnic exclusivity and told themselves comforting lies about how open and welcoming they are. The Euro-elites may have believed their own pretty lies but they cannot replace thousands of years of ethnic identity with mere paper.
The horrible irony is that the more Europe has tried to repress its true nature as a collection of exclusive ethnic communities the worse it will be when that which they have repressed returns with a vengeance. And the repressed always returns. It's only a matter of time.
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