Bassam Tibi: sensible and realistic, but still an escapist

Interviewed in Der Spiegel, Bassam Tibi, the Syrian-German moderate Muslim professor, demonstrates that on the subject of Islam he is, like so many mainstream conservatives today, half cold-eyed realist, half distracted utopian.

The realist part of Tibi states in the clearest manner that Islam is totally incompatible with the German constitution and that Muslims must therefore renounce the core doctrines of Islam including jihad and sharia if they are to be integrated into German society.

The utopian part of Tibi believes that such renunciation and such integration are possible—and he believes this despite his frank admission that out of three million Muslims in Germany, only a few thousand think the way he does. How then, according to Tibi, can the integration he calls be achieved? By the German state taking pro-active steps to integrate the Muslims. In other words, Muslims are unable (not to mention unwilling) to give up Islam—so their Western host societies must somehow do it for them. For reasons too obvious and too numerous to mention, such an expectation is the sheerest nonsense.

To be a consistent realist, instead of a half realist, half fantasist, Tibi would have to recognize that Islam is totally incompatible with Europe, and that the only solution is for the Muslims to leave Europe. Recognizing this should be no problem for Tibi personally. He tells Der Spiegel that after living for 40 years in Germany he is still not a German, and that he plans to move to the U.S. when he retires from his current position. If a person as moderate and pro-Western as Tibi has not become a German after half a lifetime in the country, how is there the remotest possibility that the three million other Muslims in Germany—all but a few thousand of whom are not moderates like Tibi—can ever become Germans?

It’s time to get serious, folks. The separation and disengagement of Muslims from the West is the only solution to the West’s Islam problem. Everything else that is said on the subject is mental masturbation.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 09, 2006 11:01 PM | Send