Is there such a thing as liberal Islam? In what sense are Islamic values compatible with Western liberal ones? What do they have in common? These are the questions at the centre of Tibi’s work. Although he shares some aspects of Samuel Huntingdon’s “Clash of Civilisations”, unlike him, he trusts in a possible peaceful development of intercultural relations, through a process involving understanding, dialogue and learning.

In this sense, this scholar from Damascus assigns a determining role to Europe and to Euro-Islam. In Tibi’s opinion, this is the context for decisive contact between Islam and Western liberal culture.

If well-organised, immigration has a formative value for democracy. The ideology of multiculturalism, on the contrary – in this critique he is similar to Huntington – is accused of confusing cultural multiplicity with the disjointed coexistence of cultural ghettoes one next to the other, as well as becoming an accomplice to extremism. Tibi considers himself a supporter of secularism without compromise. His insistence on the need for a “hegemonic” culture, a “lead-culture” (Leitkultur) has attracted much criticism both from Muslim and European liberal culture.  

However, in order for Islam and the Western world to meet, it is necessary to make a radical distinction between Islam as a basically peaceful and tolerant religion, and Islamism, “an aggressive and extremist political ideology.” 

In the name of religious freedom, Bassam Tibi therefore demands tolerance for Islam as a religion, and supports the legitimacy of actively defending the values and rules of democracy, even at the cost of using force against extremism and the accomplices of violence. This applies for example to the case of the instant deportation of an Imam in France who had obliged the faithful to wear the veil, going against French law.

For years he has emphasised the importance of forming a Muslim middle class in Europe, and in their countries of origin, characterised by a strong desire to defend modernity.

According to Tibi, Islam contains an aspiration for universalisation on the basis of its missionary message, just as the United States would like to impose globalisation starting with its own civilisation and economic and political rules. Both sides should give up something, with no “pax americana” or “pax islamica”. Islamic power can only lead to Weltunordnung (world disorder) instead of a Weltordnung, as he entitled one of his books. For Reset, Bassam Tibi has published Euro-Islam, L’integrazione mancata, 2004.