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Ibn Khaldun is justly regarded as the father of sociology and the philosophy of history. He was the first to advance a general theory of the rise and fall
Ibn Khaldun is justly regarded as the father of sociology and the philosophy of history. He was the first to advance a general theory of the rise and fall of civilizations, which he based on his observations of the Maghrib. According to him, there is always a state of tension between the nomads and the city dwellers. History moves forward in the resolution of this tension. The nomads possess in abundance the quality of asabiyah, which in a general sense means group feeling and group loyalty. By contrast, city life tends to dilute and destroy group feeling. According to Ibn Khaldun power is political. Asabiyah fosters political and military unity and enables the nomads to overcome the sedentary city dwellers. In time, the nomads themselves settle down and become city dwellers and in turn are overcome by a new wave of nomads. Asabiyah thus becomes the key to political power and the building block of nations and empires. It is the glue, the cement that binds people together and demands and obtains the sacrifice of individuals for monumental tasks. When asabiyah is diluted or destroyed, civilizations lose the glue that holds them together and they disintegrate.
This theory is widely used as a model to explain the rise and fall of civilizations. However, Ibn Khaldun’s ideas present enormous difficulties from an Islamic perspective. Islam is against asabiyah based on race, color or national origin (“We made you into nations and tribes so that you may recognize and know each other-not that you may despise each other” Qur’an, 49:13). Islam seeks to create a global community “enjoining what is noble, forbidding what is wrong and believing only in Allah”. Such a community transcends the asabiyah based on race, region or national origin and embraces all nations.
While it is true, as Ibn Khaldun maintains, that asabiyah enables common people to achieve uncommon results and build nations and empires, it is also true that nations built on asabiyah are by nature aggressive and expansive. They become predatory on their neighbors and foster feelings of superiority over other nations and tribes. Hitler’s Germany offers an example. The Nazis built a nation-state based on German asabiyah-nationalism based on the superiority of the German race over other races. This enabled them, temporarily, to dominate Europe. But Nazi Germany collapsed, in part because other nation states would not accept German ascendancy. In a philosophical sense, asabiyah frees the individual from his or her ego and places the walls of egocentric exclusion at the national or racial boundary. The prison of race, tribe, or nation replaces the prison of the ego.
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