Ibn Khaldun

When the North African Arab historiographer and historian Ibn Khaldun (1332 – 1406) wrote his book about universal history, he had noticed that there are essential elements that are repeated when nations progress, and other essential elements that are repeated when nations collapse. We can call these elements the reasons of progress and collapse.

He wrote these notes in his introduction which became more famous than the book itself, because it was, as the British historian Arnold J. Toynbee called, "a philosophy of history which is undoubtedly the greatest work of its kind that has ever yet been created by any mind in any time or place.” Because of Ibn Khaldun’s introduction, he is claimed to be the world’s first sociologist.

Ibn Khaldun conceived a central social conflict between sedentary life in the city and nomadic life in the desert. He explained how a group of barbarians live a nomadic phase in tribes and other small kinship groups until they can develop a sort of social cohesion among themselves. This social cohesion can be intensified and enlarged by a religious or national ideology. Then they become desert warriors on the peripheries of great empires and use the unity presented by those areas to their advantage in order to conquer the city (sedentary life) and change the leadership.

Once the barbarians solidify their control over the conquered society, however, they become attracted to its more refined aspects, such as literacy and arts, and either assimilate into or appropriate such cultural practices.

But, because the new rulers establish themselves at the center of their empire, they become increasingly lax and more concerned with maintaining their lifestyles. Also, the social cohesion is most strong in the nomadic phase, and decreases as civilization advances. It carries groups to power but contains within itself the seeds of the group's downfall. So, when a society becomes a great civilization, its high point is followed by a period of decay.

Thus, a new group, bound by a stronger cohesion, can emerge at the periphery of their control and effect a change in leadership, beginning the cycle anew. Then, eventually, the former barbarians will be conquered by a new set of barbarians, who will repeat the process.

Conversation

-        Why has the religious and nationalist right trends with its extremist and populist wings achieved remarkable success in separate elections in more than one country recently?

-        Communism collapsed and socialism was weakened by the fall of the Soviet Union in the late Eighties of last centry, leading to the emergence of Eastern Europe spring as the triumph of Western liberalism. On the contrary, the Arab Spring, at the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century, has completely eroded Western liberalism so that it has nothing left to abandon.

-        How?

-        Liberals seem like a stripper pulling off a piece of her clothes with every step she takes, until she looks completely naked. Liberals abandon every principle of society in order to make society without any principles. At first they renounced religion, then family, then childbearing, then marriage, and so on. Look at European liberalism now. It looks completely naked after it has brought its societies into a fatal crisis. Churches turned into museums, atheism is the most widespread belief. Most new generations do not want to marry, have families or have children.

-        Liberals do not abandon the society’s principles. They just replace the national and religious principles with universal human principles that include all members of the society. 

-        What’s wrong with the national and religious principles? Did not these principles make Europe the best continent economically, militarily and technologically? But on the other hand, what did liberalism do for the Europeans? It has made threatened with extinction, despite their wealth, technological progress and military superiority. It has opened the door to immigrants and refugees, giving them privileges as minorities, until they have turned against Europeans with terrorism and crimes. The Europeans were about to become a minority in Europe.

-        The national and religious principles might be in favor of Europe, but they have been a burden on other peoples for centuries, when Europe had invaded them by colonialism, slavery and exploitation.

-        This may be true, but that is because Europe had led the world scientifically, technologically and culturally, and the rest of the peoples was dependent on it.