---

News Release

Last modified: Monday, February 23, 2009

Expert on Islam and politics to speak at IU Bloomington

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Feb. 23, 2009

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Bassam Tibi, an internationally known author and scholar of Islam and world politics, will give two lectures this week at Indiana University Bloomington.

Tibi is a professor of international relations and director of the Center for International Affairs, University of Goettingen, Germany, and A.D. White professor-at-large, Cornell University. He is known as a critic of Islamism and an advocate for Islamic reform and integration of Muslims into European society.

His IU Bloomington lectures will include:

• "The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New World Disorder," 7:30 p.m.-9 p.m. today (Monday, Feb. 23), Woodburn Hall 120
• "The Islamization of Anti-Semitism," 7:30 p.m.-9 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 24, Fine Arts 102

Tibi's books include Islam's Predicament with Modernity: Religious Reform and Cultural Change (2009); Islam, World Politics and Europe (2008); and The Challenge of Fundamentalism (2002). He has been a visiting professor at Harvard and Yale.

His lectures at IU Bloomington are part of the IU Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies Chair Spring Lecture Series, which will also include talks March 3 by Deniz Tansi of Yeditepe University, Turkey; March 26 by Corinna Guttstadt, visiting scholar at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum; and April 21 by Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

IU's Robert A. and Sandra S. Borns Jewish Studies Program will co-sponsor Tibi's Feb. 24 lecture. All lectures are organized by Professor Kemal Silay, Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies Professor in the IU Department of Central Eurasian Studies, part of the College of Arts and Sciences.

---

---