In the coming time, how we organise our lives, view our own cultures and interact with others will be determined by the outcome of a struggle between two diametrically opposed ideas. These ideas are further separated, and the differences between them sharpened, through the process of what we call globalisation[i]. The first is that of the "Clash of Civilisations" and in this Muslims will be the main opponents of the West (see section below, “Global Theories”). This is not a new idea[ii] and is in fact a continuation of older ideas, about Islam as a predatory civilisation threatening the West[iii].
The opposed idea, that of the "Dialogue of Civilisations,” was first introduced by President Muhammad Khatami of Iran in the UN[iv] and supported by Kofi Annan. Khatami’s statement made a dramatic impact because his country is associated in Western minds with “terrorism” and “extremism” although this idea too is not entirely new. World figures like the Pope[v], John Paul II, the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, Nelson Mandela, Prince Charles of England and Bishop Desmond Tutu, on one level, and many others,[vi] on another level, have been involved in their own way in precisely this kind of dialogue for many years. For people of good will or faith the idea of dialogue lies at the heart of the human condition and the need to reach out.
The idea of a dialogue of civilisations is central to the Muslim perception of self. By knowing God as Compassionate and Merciful – the two most frequently repeated names of God of the 99 – Muslims know they must embrace others even those who may not belong to their community, religion or nation. God tells us to appreciate the variety He has created in human society: “And among His signs are the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the variations in your languages and your colours” (The Quran, Surah 30). The examination of language and colour or race is the stock-in-trade of the social scientist and this I believe is a good point to introduce Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406).
Ibn Khaldun and the Understanding of Civilisations
Unfortunately the names of Muslim scholars are not as well-known as I believe they should be. When I talk of Ibn Khaldun people usually ask: Who is he? Another “terrorist”? Any links to Osama bin Laden? Or is he an oil sheikh or an Arab minister? Even the scholars in this distinguished audience who have heard of Ibn Khaldun may well ask why are we here to celebrate an obscure Arab scholar who lived seven centuries ago; some may add – and an even more obscure Pakistani scholar who has taken the Chair named after the Arab? How is Ibn Khaldun the Arab in question, they may ponder, relevant to our problems in the 21st century?
However, I am confident that there will be many others who will recognise the relevance of the theme of my address – Ibn Khaldun and the understanding of civilisations. The noted historian Arnold Toynbee, recognising the scope and scale of Ibn Khaldun’s work, wrote: “Undoubtedly the greatest work of its kind that has ever been created by any mind in any time or place” (Ibn Khaldun 1969: xiv). Not only is Ibn Khaldun generally recognised as the “father, or one of the fathers, of modern cultural history and social science” (Mahdi 1968: 56) influencing and shaping these disciplines into our time but his work provides the intellectual point at which other world scholars connect in genuine appreciation[vii].
Ibn Khaldun’s ideas foreshadow those of our own time. “Some of the central formulae of the modern age,” I noted with an element of awe “are reflected in Ibn Khaldun’s theories: Karl Marx’s stages of human history which provide the dynamics for the dialectics of conflict between groups; Max Weber’s typology of leadership; Vilfredo Pareto’s circulation of elites; Ernest Geller’s pendulum swing theory of Islam, oscillating from an urban, formal literal tradition to a rural, informal and mystical one” (Ahmed 1989: 101).
Indeed Emile Durkheim’s concept of “mechanical” and “organic solidarity” reflects Ibn Khaldun’s notion of asabyiah or “social cohesion.” It is asabyiah that is at the core of the Khaldunian understanding of society and we shall return to it later (see section “The Breakdown of Ibn Khaldun’s Cycle”). Durkheim, himself one of the founding father’s of modern social science, showed us how the collapse of solidarity led to abnormal behaviour. He called this anomie. I will argue below that anomie is what Muslim society is experiencing as a result of the breakdown of asabyiah.
There is a fundamental difference however between the modern Western sociologists and Ibn Khaldun. For all his “scientific” objectivity – and for many Muslims it is excessive – Ibn Khaldun still writes as a believer. There is a moral imperative in his interpretation of asabyiah as the organising principle of society. Muslims see human beings as having been created to implement the vision of God on earth through their behaviour and organisation of society. The human being is a Vice-regent of God according to the Quran. So asabyiah as an organising principle is not “value-free.”
With the inherited colonial structures of administration, politics and education disintegrating and new ones yet to supplant them or even consolidate, with old identities being challenged, Muslim society is in flux. Asabyiah is at its weakest in these societies
“Social organisation,” Ibn Khaldun wrote, “is necessary to the human species. Without it, the existence of human beings would be incomplete. God’s desire to settle the world with human beings and to leave them as His representatives on earth would not materialise. This is the meaning of civilisation, the object of the science under discussion” (Ibn Khaldun 1969 : 46). The social order thus reflects the moral order; the former cannot be in a state of collapse without suggesting a moral crisis.
Ibn Khaldun’s methodological approach demonstrates intellectual confidence. Although based in sociology, Ibn Khaldun discussed in his analysis the impact of Greek philosophy on society (ibid: 373-375), the interpretation of dreams (ibid: 70-87), the influence of climate and food (ibid: 58-69) and the effect of the personality of the leader in the rise and fall of dynasties (ibid: 238-261). In using cross-cultural comparison, Arab, Berber, Turk and Mongol groups would provide him the data for his theories. Besides, he was not writing as an isolated scholar in an ivory tower but from the vantage point of a political actor in the history of his time. The rich material he gathered was the basis for his Ilm-al-Imran or “the science of culture or society.”
“Ibn Khaldun’s life,” I wrote, “forms a bridge, a transition, between the distinct phases of Muslim history which we are examining: the Arab dynasties in the tail-end of which – as in Umayyad Spain – he lived, and the great Muslim empires which would develop by the end of the century in which he died. His life also teaches us many things, confirming them for us in our own period: the uncertainty of politics; the fickleness of rulers; the abrupt changes of fortune, in jail one day, honored the next; and finally, the supremacy of the ideal in the constant, unceasing, search for ilm, knowledge, and therefore the ultimate triumph of the human will and intellect against all odds” (Ahmed 1989: 106).
All of us need to be grateful to Ibn Khaldun for reminding us of the lesson of “the human will and intellect”; we also need to be grateful to the American University for keeping his memory alive. I held the Fellowship (Chair) named in honor of Allama Iqbal at Cambridge University for five years. For me now to speak as the Ibn Khaldun Chair at another great University is a singular honor because I believe that though the two, Iqbal the poet-philosopher and Ibn Khaldun the sociologist, represent different zones, different disciplines and different approaches together they provide a rich mine for contemporary scholarship and an authentic basis for the dialogue of civilisations. Let us examine some current global theories about society.
Global Theories: Islam Versus the West?
We must not consider this discussion as merely an academic exercise or one motivated by a woolly if well-intentioned effort at inter-faith dialogue. An understanding of Islam is important in our world because there are fifty-five Muslim states – of which at least one is nuclear -- and Islam has over one billion followers with abundant vitality and passion whose span is now truly global, even in the modern sense. It is therefore as important for Muslims to explain Islam to non-Muslims as it is for non-Muslims to understand it.
Yet Muslims appear be challenged by certain cultural and intellectual aspects of globalisation because many appear to equate globalisation with Westernisation. In this they echo many Western analysts who also equate the two as one and the same thing. Indeed Anthony Giddens argues modernity itself is a “Western project” (1990: 174). Thomas Friedman narrows globalisation down further to “Americanisation” (2000: xix).
Although Muslims appear to be uncomfortable with globalisation, the idea and practice of globalisation are familiar to Muslim history. Islam’s vision of the world is by definition global. There is neither East nor West for God (The Quran: Surah 2, Verse 115). Islamic history has had long periods in which we recognise elements from what we today call globalisation: societies living within different ethnic, geographic and political boundaries, but speaking a language understood throughout, enjoying a common cultural sensibility and recognising the same over-arching ethos in the world-view (see Hourani’s A History of the Arab Peoples, 1991, and Hodgson’s The Venture of Islam, 1994, for just how much globalisation there once was in Islamic civilisation). A man could travel from Granada in Europe to the Maghreb in North Africa, on to Cairo, then to the Arabian peninsula and from there to Baghdad, and, across three continents, still be in familiar culture. Ibn Khaldun in the 14th century is just one such example.
Another aspect of that time can provide inspiration for those of us searching the past for examples of the dialogue of civilisations. The Jews, Christians and Muslims living in Spain created a rich cultural synthesis, each culture enriching the other, which resulted in literature, art and architecture of high quality. The library in Cordoba had more books than all the libraries of Europe put together. There were long periods of religious and cultural harmony[viii].
The influence of Muslim ideas, culture, art and architecture on Europe was wide and deep. Key figures like Aquinas were influenced by Islamic thought. The Greeks were introduced to Europe via Muslim Spain and through the filter of Arabic.
Most people in the West are unaware of Europe’s cultural and intellectual debt to Islam. Muslims take this indifference as a deliberate slight. It provides the background to why they view with suspicion developments in our time. It allows them to simplify global issues and interpret a series of recent developments. on the surface unconnected, as a well-laid plan by the West to humiliate and even subjugate them: The Satanic Verses controversy, the collapse of the BCCI Bank, the Gulf War, the rape and death camps of Bosnia, Kosova and Chechnya and the continuing plight of the Palestinians and Kashmiris. In turn, critics accuse Muslims of human rights abuse in many countries including Sudan, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In Pakistan as an extreme act of desperation a Bishop shot himself in protest at the treatment of his community.
In this milieu of suspicion even scholarly exercises – Samuel Huntington’s essay, “The Clash of Civilisations?” (1993) and later book (1996), Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man (1998) and Felipe Fernandez Armesto’s Millennium (1995) - are seen by Muslims as part of a global conspiracy against Islam, part of a bludgeon-Islam-out-of-existence school of thought.
However, what cannot be denied is that these theorists made an unexpected contribution to the discussion of Islam by underlining the role of religion in contemporary global society. It was no longer possible to talk of globalisation in terms of world trade and high finance only. But these theories also allowed deeply rooted historical prejudices to resurface and even gave them a degree of respectability.
In his influential essay “The Clash of Civilisations?” Huntington argued that future conflicts will be based in religious culture not ideology or economic interests. Islam was singled out as a potential enemy civilisation in an argument that was as deterministic as it was simplistic. “Islam has bloody borders,” concluded Huntington (ibid: 35). But so do Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism – ask, respectively, the Bosnians and Chechens, the Palestinians and the Kashmiris; and where does this dangerously deterministic argument take us except to a clash of civilisations? Is this merely a self-fulfilling prophecy? Isn’t the real clash, the cause of the turmoil, to be located within Islam? Take the examples of Algeria, Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Indonesia. Isn’t the target there the Muslim leadership?
Besides, the global strategic and security interests of the West are directly related to Muslim lands and many Muslim nations are seen as important allies: of the 9 “pivotal states” identified in a recent article by Western experts around which America forms its foreign policy 5 were Muslim - Algeria, Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan and Indonesia (Chase et al. 1996). What about the 20 million or more Muslims permanently settled in the West who Huntington conveniently ignores? Where do they line up? Are they are a bridge between the two civilisations? Can they challenge the “Islam versus the West” dichotomy?
What about the serious efforts, at global level, perhaps for the first time on this scale and frequency, of influential individuals advocating mutual understanding? The Pope’s statements are one example (John Paul II, 1994). The Prince of Wales’ initiative to bring better understanding between Islam and Western civilisation, which began with his celebrated lecture at Oxford in 1993 on Islam and the West, is another example. The speech was widely reported in the Muslim world and struck a chord. The King of Saudi Arabia, one of the most powerful and inaccessible monarchs on earth, broke all protocol and drove to the Prince’s hotel late at night to congratulate him when the Prince visited his country shortly after the lecture.
Although, provocative and widely discussed theories like that of Huntington’s are inadequate. Let us look elsewhere for explanations as to what is happening in the Muslim world.
The Breakdown of Ibn Khaldun’s Cycle
Ibn Khaldun highlighted the importance of the ruler and his duties to the ruled in this world so that both may aspire to and secure the next. The leader embodies both political and moral authority[ix]. Khaldun’s science of culture ultimately functions to illuminate the science of good governance. In our time, one of the major crises that faces Muslim society is that of leadership. Yet even influential contemporary Western thinkers commenting on Islam, like Huntington and Fukuyama, to name two, have failed to identify the importance of Muslim leadership.
On the surface there is a bewildering range of leadership: kings, military dictators, democrats and, as in Afghanistan, young and inexperienced tribal men – or religious scholars, the meaning of Taliban – running a country. The Taliban and their guest from Saudi Arabia, Osama bin Laden, who is accused of master-minding the bombing of the American embassies in Africa in 1998 and the USS Cole in 2000 berthed in the Middle East in his war against “Jews and Christians,” symbolise a certain Muslim response to our time. In other countries such as Algeria, Egypt, Pakistan and Indonesia, Muslim leaders akin to the Taliban in thought and behaviour, actively challenge government. The Iranians, considered fanatics in the West, complain that the Taliban are so extreme that they are giving Islam a bad name. Clearly, ideas of Muslim leadership are hotly contested.
What then is going on in society? Who are the emerging leaders? Defining these leaders is no longer a simple question of taxonomy but of examining what factors are responsible for their emergence and the changes taking place in society. The collapse of leadership is thus a symptom of the breakdown of society and a cause of the breakdown.
It is time to turn for assistance to Ibn Khaldun’s most widely known theory, that of asabiyah or social cohesion which is at the core of social organisation. Asabiyah binds groups together through a common language, culture and code of behaviour and when there is conscious approximation of behaviour to an idea of the ideal, at different levels, family, clan, tribe and kingdom or nation, society is whole. With asabyiah society fulfils its primary purpose to function with integrity and perpetuate its values and ideas to the next generation. Asabiyah is what traditional societies possess, but which is broken down in urbanised society over a period of time. Of course, Ibn Khaldun pointed out that certain civilised societies based in cities with developed social organisation, arts and crafts, may take a long time to break down.
Ibn Khaldun famously suggested that rural and tribal peoples come down from the mountains to urban areas and dominate them and four generations on, as they absorb the manners and values of urban life, they lose their special quality of social cohesion and become effete and therefore vulnerable to fresher invasions from the hills (ibid: 123-142). This cyclical, if over-simplified, pattern of rise and fall held for centuries and up to the advent of European colonialism[x]. Even the disruptive force of European imperialism over the 19th and 20th centuries did not break the cycle.
Paradoxically it is only after independence from the European colonial powers in the middle of the 20th century when Muslims societies should have become stronger and more cohesive that Ibn Khaldun’s cycle began to be seriously affected. It is now drying up at source. Tribal and rural groups can no longer provide asabiyah; urban areas in any case are inimical to it: the result is loss of vigor and cohesion. Muslims everywhere will voice their alarm at the breakdown of society. They know that something is going fundamentally wrong but are not sure why.
Asabiyah is breaking down because of the following reasons: the massive urbanisation, the dramatic demographic changes, a population explosion, large-scale migrations to the West, the gap between rich and poor which is growing ominously wide, the widespread corruption and mismanagement of rulers, the rampant materialism coupled with the low premium on scholarship, the crisis of identity and, perhaps most significantly, new and often alien ideas and images, at once seductive and repellent, instantly communicated from the West which challenge traditional values and customs. This process of breakdown is taking place when a large percentage of the population in the Muslim world is young, dangerously illiterate, mostly jobless and therefore highly motivated for radical change[xi].
Globalisation is the easy target when looking around for something to blame for the problems of our world. But asabiyah was damaged from the mid-twentieth century onwards as a direct result of political developments: the creation of Pakistan and Israel, the full-blown revolution in Iran, the civil war situation in Algeria, Afghanistan and parts of Central Asia displaced and killed millions, split communities and shattered families.
Jahannum (hell) or Jail: The Dilemma of the Muslim Scholar
Following Khaldunian logic, with asabiyah breaking down society can no longer implement God’s vision for human civilisation. The crisis is compounded as the scholars of Islam who can offer balanced advice and guidance are in disarray. Muslims believe that those who possess ilm or knowledge best explain the idea of what God desires from us on earth. So central is ilm to understanding Islam that it is the second most used word in the Koran. The Prophet's hadith, saying, "The death of a scholar, is the death of knowledge" emphasises the importance of scholarship.
Unfortunately, the reality in the Muslim world is that scholars are silenced, humiliated or chased out of their homes[xii]. The implications for society are enormous. In the place of scholars advising, guiding and criticising the rulers of the day we have the sycophants and the secret services. The wisdom, compassion and learning of the former risk the danger of being replaced by the paranoia and neurosis of the latter. And where do the scholars escape? To America or Europe. Yet it is popular to blame the West, to blame others, for conspiracies.
With the scholars driven out or under pressure to remain silent it is not surprising that the Muslim world's statistics in education are among the lowest in the world. The literacy figures are far from satisfactory, and for women they are alarming. As a result women in the Muslim world are deprived of their inheritance and their rights, and the men in their families tell them that this is Islam.
With those scholars silenced who can provide objectivity within the Islamic tradition and resilience in times of change, other religious scholars working in a different tradition interpret Islam narrowly. Islam for them has become a tool of repression. Its brunt is felt by women and the minorities. Political tyranny also grows unchecked, as the scholars are not at hand to comment and criticise.
Professor Abdul Hamid Abu Sulayman, the President of the International Institute for Islamic Thought and based in America, summed up the crisis: “The Muslim scholar is either caught between the ignorant Mullahs threatening him with Jahannum (hell) or the corrupt rulers threatening him with jail” (in personal conversation[xiii]). Jahannum or jail was the choice. This was the direct consequence of the collapse of asabiyah.
The Challenge to Identity
The scale of the collapse of asabiyah and the power and speed of globalisation – and the two appear to be related – have challenged ideas of identity, which define and shape society. Primary identities in society are based in blood, place or religion[xiv]. Language is sometimes shared as reinforcing identity in all three categories. In Iran the Persian language is a source of pride for each and every category. In other countries language expresses the barriers between the categories. In Pakistan, Urdu is the declared national language, Punjabi the language of the ethnic majority and Arabic the language of religion. Invariably linguistic tensions translate into ethnic and political clashes. Sometimes the divisions within religion into sects result in conflict and violence. The clashes between Shias and Sunnis in Islam have formed a major historical theme in the Middle East. In South Asia the annual clashes still cost lives.
In the last century of the three main sources of identity, which defined an individual, race or ethnicity, nationalism and religion, it was nationalism, which was the dominant source of identity. The two world wars were fought on the basis of nationalism. With the emergence of Communism as a world force in the middle of the century and its aggressive hostility to religion it appeared that religion, as a source of identity would soon be irrelevant to most people.
With the processes of globalisation forming at the end of the last century the situation has changed. Ethnicity fused with religion as in the Balkans. In other places ethnicity re-emerged with virulence as in the war between Hutus and Tutsis in central Africa. Nationalism is changed too as national borders have melted for business people, specialists and experts who cross the globe pursuing their economic, cultural or political interests. Hundreds of thousands of Asian workers in IT, for example, have recently been welcomed by the USA and Europe. The poor however find borders as impenetrable as ever; the border between Mexico and the USA is an example.
With migration, nationalism and ethnicity, which are usually but not always associated with a region, are weakened. Religion on the other hand can be transported and can flourish anywhere in the world given the right circumstances. We have the example of Islam, which has begun to make an impact in America at the turn of this century. Muslim political commentators feel that although the Muslim vote is still small in terms of voter strength it made a contribution to the election in 2000 by supporting George Bush against Al Gore in their tightly contested election battle.
Muslim leaders confirm these trends. The leaders of the first part of the 20th century would be cast in nationalist terms leading “national” movements – for examples, Ataturk in Turkey, Jinnah in Pakistan, Sukarno of Indonesia and Nasser in Egypt. Later in the century, other kinds of leaders would be at the head of movements with a religious message not restricted to national borders; Ayatollah Khomeini is an example for one tradition in Islam; the Taliban for another. The opponents of the former would be national opponents – the Greeks for the Turks and the Indians for the Pakistanis. The opponents of the latter would be moral opponents – the Great Satan or America for Iran and Afghanistan.
The tidal wave of religion, which engulfed national and ethnic identities, has yet to crest in the Muslim world. It has translated into political power in countries like Iran and Afghanistan. The tensions between the three sources of identity are acute. In some countries the old fashioned nationalism left over from the past means a ruthless suppression of other forms of identity. Iraq and Syria provide us examples of this. Countries like Pakistan exhibit severe tension between an emerging religious identity and a battered nationalist one. Ethnicity also remains an unresolved factor in Pakistan. The tensions are expressed through the violence and political instability in the country.
With the inherited colonial structures of administration, politics and education disintegrating and new ones yet to supplant them or even consolidate, with old identities being challenged, Muslim society is in flux. Asabyiah is at its weakest in these societies. Central and South Asia states provide us with examples.
Paradoxically, it is in those parts of the Muslim world where there is the unifying factor of dynastic rule or language, as, for example, in the states on the Arabian peninsula that there is comparative stability; paradoxically because these states are seen as reactionary by Muslims who want genuine democracy and stagnant by those who want an Islamic state based on the pristine principles of the early egalitarian Islamic order. Nonetheless the unifying factors of dynasty and language sustain asabyiah, which ensures continuity and stability in times of global change.
(to be continued)