"Islam is free from anti-Semitism," said scholar Bassam Tibi, Sept. 22, at a Cornell Institute for Public Affairs colloquium. He argued that Islamism, and not Islam, is responsible for anti-Semitic and anti-American viewpoints.

Islam is a spiritual faith that follows the Koran. Islamism is a political ideology founded and supported by radical Muslims, said Tibi, a Cornell A.D. White Professor-at-Large and professor of international relations at the University of Gottingen in Germany. Religious fundamentalism is a recent global phenomenon, he said, in which religious differences are being blamed for political issues. He calls this "religionization" and notes that Islamism is an example.

Islam was founded in the seventh century, and soon after, Tibi said, Muslims led a globalization project, expanding as far as China and Spain to become the economically dominant civilization in the world for more than a millennium. As Muslim culture began to decline in the 18th century, some Muslims blamed economic and political factors. Others, however, religionized the decline, initially blaming Europe, but in the past few decades, switching the blame to the United States and Israel because many European countries have sheltered Muslims.

Tibi cited the Iraq war as an example of a recent religionization of a political issue. He partially blamed a few American scholars for calling Americans "new crusaders" and saying that Israel is writing U.S. foreign policy. He said that many Islamists leaders are capitalizing on these works. Because faith is non-negotiable, any political issue presented as a religious one cannot be argued, he said.

A follower of Islam, Tibi is opposed to Islamism. "It is very important for Muslims to say we are against racism," he said, asking Muslims to take a stand against anti-Semitism for the integrity of Islam.

Graduate student Sarah Perdue is a writer intern at the Cornell Chronicle.