Raised in Damascus, and having spent most of his life in Germany, Bassam Tibi is a leading expert in radical Islam, sharia law, and Muslim intellectual history more broadly. He is also a passionate critic of Islamism, and an advocate for enlightened Islam rooted in the ideas of the great Muslim philosophers of yore. Although brought up—by his own admission—to be an anti-Semite, Tibi credits Jewish thinkers such as Ernst Bloch not only with his discarding of this prejudice, but with his current ideas about his own religion. Ed Husain writes:

March 15 marks the beginning of this year’s Israel Apartheid Week, during which campus groups around the world hold rallies and events for the purpose of defaming the Jewish state and mustering support for the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction it (BDS). Richard Kemp comments: