Interesting, but I would argue that ethics imply society – who can be “moral” all alone? – and hence membership of a group. Moral and ethnic community have historically been coterminous, but the great experiment of Liberalism has been to extract morality from its complex ethnic mesh and apply it, in rational, pared down form, to humankind. The assumption is that humanity can always recognise itself as such, a point explicitly denied by both the hard right and the far left. For the right, exemplified by Joseph de Maistre, our ethno-cultural loyalties were too essential to our “moral character”, to be shed; whilst the left increasingly sees the whole idea of “humanity” as “western” and hence “imperial” in global reach. Yes, they are both crazy – but so are the Liberals! For whilst we can recognize each other as human, pesky differences nevertheless loom large, and greatly trouble the humanist project; whilst many of those currently defending the Liberal order refer increasingly to its “Judaeo-Christian” foundations, which makes the Left’s point. A modified conservative position, which allows the humanity of all whilst understanding that many subsequent social choices are culturally particular and hence incommensurable, strikes me as the most obvious, most painless path out of the thicket. This would imply a withdrawal from foreign adventure and a gradually closing down of mass immigration. Sadly, the Left-Liberal alliance, which runs the west, is instead doubling down on the attempt to produce an “ideological” world community to replace the old ethno-cultural loyalties of the west, whilst hoping that it can be sufficiently divorced from its “Athens-Rome-Jerusalem” beginnings to “include” everyone: a “Rainbow Coalition of the Willing.” By a very natural paradox, it appeals to nobody beyond its preachers.
Couple things. The Liberal/Left are Postmodernist, they come from the Nietzsche side of secular humanism, with Freud and Merx thrown in, and so are Moral Relativists with Situational Ethics coupled with Critical Theory which discounts the existence of real, or ultimate, truth, but only in personal truth. Correct and incorrect are the moral compass, and that needle spins as it is jiggled.
They have used entryism to take the MSM, Entertainment, education, education, political industries, and are on a Nihilist mission to tear down traditional society, wile having no concept of what will replace it.
We are in a sick world now, Liberalism is evil, and it has immense soft power, and they use mass migration to break society, as this allows a minority to take total control, as the majority no longer exists, so it is power to the most aggressive and dirty group, which in this day is Liberals.
Christopher Barclay
2 years ago
An excellent article. Understandably Roussinos compares his analysis with that of the nation-builders who expected a strong democracy to emerge with Saddam Hussein’s death. He could also have challenged the analysts who hold that Syria was a stable country until the US and Saudi Arabia got involved and that Assad has majority support.
And Assad worked in “our” NHS and so is beyond criticism
Anna Bramwell
2 years ago
An excellent article, but downplays the power of Baathism to avert political conflict. Assad’s 2012 constitution abandoned the one party state, although only communist and socialist parties were able to compete. Western observers must have been surprised by the ban on religious parties, too. Baathism was secular, socialist and nationalist.The comments on the weakness of civil society under Islam struck me. The four Muslim countrues I lived and worked in all exhibited this. More such articles please.
Jon Redman
2 years ago
The past resembles the future as water resembles water
— Ibn Khaldun
Victoria Cooper
2 years ago
Enlightening, apposite and timely.
Satyam Nagwekar
2 years ago
Nice but slightly meandering. While the whole circle of life, as explained by asabiyya, is fascinating, the events in modern life are far too intricate to be explained away by this concept.
Peter Mott
2 years ago
In their (mistitled) book “Why nations Fail” Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson argue that institutions have very considerable inertia. So when Rhodesia became independent the “extractive” (their word) institutions of the colonial regime were taken over and – this is the killer – actually made worse by Mugabe and not doubt by his successor Emmerson “Crocodile” Mnangagwa.
Insitutional inertia from colonialist extractive regimes can explain the regimes of the Middle East as well as South Africa and Zimbabwe not to mention Mexico (land of the conquistadors).
This is not to deny the Khaldunian cycle, but instituional inertia is more a general an explanation. Acemoglu do not say much about what preceded European colonialism, but for the Middle East the present piece suggests you can go back much firther finding the same cycle of one extractive regime following another with – in some cases at least – the colonial period being less extractive than most.
One final point: Acemoglu talks of “critical junctures”, moments when a new direction is possible (the Industrial Revolution is one), and at such junctures individuals can count. So it is not all impersonal forces.
A nice artiicle – thanks.
Prashant Kotak
2 years ago
Khaldun seems a hoot, but why did he name his masterwork after an Australian light nut?
If you have not, you should get a copy of: “ArabianSands is Wilfred Thesiger’s record of his extraordinary journey through the parched “Empty Quarter” of Arabia. Educated at Eton and Oxford, Thesiger was repulsed by the softness and rigidity of Western life—”the machines, the calling cards, the meticulously aligned streets.” In the spirit of T. E. Lawrence, he set out to explore the”
Thesiger devotes much of his thought on this great cyclical Arab migration. During his life with the Bedouin, and his walk across Arabia, he exactly described this Nomadic migration in waves. Leaving the Oman he traveled through the Empty Quarter – and how tribes would be pushed into the desert, becoming hardened, and to him, purified, and migrating North they eventually wash up into the agricultural parts of Iraq and the Levant, and take them, wile more tribes are moving from Oman into the desert, becoming hard and pure, as the ones in Damascus and Jordan become soft…..
A fantastic read, and his other books – Excellent, he only died a couple decades ago, and used to talk at the Royal Geographic Society occasionally (I have signed books from those), one of the world’s most remarkable peoples.
It was the Post WWII Western action in Iraq and Syria which led to all this mess according to one book I read, on how all land, and the towns, cities, were owned in feudal manner, as is always done in Muslim nations. The houses in the towns owned by the Sheik, the agriculture land also, all the people mere tenant farmers and renters. Tenancy was hereditary – BUT NONE OF THIS WAS IN WRITING, all just traditional.
This was identical to Japan Post WWII, all the farmers mere poor tenants of the upper classes. MacArthur redistributed the land. He did it to stop Communism which was sweeping in – and so forced the sale of the land for almost nothing to the tenants, and gave cheap loans to them to do it. (The landowners basically had it taken from them for pennies). Now the peasant people of Japan were enfranchised, they had reason to build and work hard and make the country strong.
In Arabia the Westerners did not do this, instead they turned the land over to local strong men to administer, and so it sort of worked as collectives, say, and that meant the people were even less enfranchised as they still did not own their land – BUT also had lost their traditional rights to the land their families had worked for generations.
MacArthur Unified the Japanese people by enfranchising them by land ownership. The ones managing rebuilding Arabia did the opposite! How exactly like the rebuilding of Iraq after the last war it was.
Also the Alawites used the system Trotsky has always promoted, Entryism. It is how the Western nu-dictators have taken USA by Entryism taking over the Universities, Media and Political machines, and so a small minority ends up with ultimate power. That the method of Entryism is not talked of shows how little people understand the world. My guess is the Elites who have taken the education, MSM, Social Media, and Politics are using the method talked here, the divide and conquer, the bringing on massed outsiders, to destroy a civilization. The Liberal/Left are on a Mission to destroy the West, and I am sure they know Ibn Khaldun, as they do Trotsky and Marx, and are very well on their way. Diversity is not strength, it is division.
Sorry, I should have said the lands of the Arabs, not Arabia. Sikes-Picot made ‘Arabia’ end at the Arabian peninsula, an artificial line, and gave Syria to France.
And it was the ‘Mandate for Mesopotamia’ 1920-1930s post WWI set (after Taking out the Ottomans) and later up the Hashmite Kingship covering all the disparate peoples of Iraq under the one ruler, and cutting off ‘Arabia’, that began it – and as you know a stream of rulers after 1958 when the monarchy ended (I knew his grand daughter, Faysal’s)
I know there was not an occupation of Iraq like Japan, but the British/French managed it and Americans later, from post WWI picked and influenced the leaders through the 1950s – and if they had left things alone, or just went the mile to fix the broken places they administered, rather than setting borders and appointing strong men, the Middle East would be likely, a better place.
Imposing 1/2 democracy 1/2 strong men was failure. Break the traditional system, make it half way based on Western ways and the rest chaotic, yet traditional, did not work, cannot work.
But then I always blame the modern world on President Trueman, fallowing FDRs policy of Breaking Europe post WWII. He let Russia have all East Europe by refusing to invade Greece, which Churchill pleaded with him to do (instead the 4th invasion was Marseille, and did NOTHING) and so Russia got Southern East Europe and Caucasus and Balkans, – and his slowing of Patton gave Russia North East Europe – I think this was to BREAK Europe as a power. Then he forced all Colonies to be let go – this also broke Europe intentionally, as the markets were a necessity – the thing is the colonies were not ready for Self Governing yet – But Trueman forced it on Europe, and this hurt all the ex-colonies greatly.
So I am as always a conspiracy loon, and think the world is not run for good governing, but for ulterior reasons. I see the evil Dulls brothers all over Iran (there was Mossadegh, and more) and then all the MENA.
The British governed the Iraq region 30 years, fixed who ruled, but never made it work – and I understand the Pan-Arabist and Communists, and other chaos of ethnic ambitions throughout – but I see the chaos throughout the MENA as all being the lack of Land Reform. If the people could ever have been Enfranchised by owning their stake in the country, and they could have, the region would be prosperous and peaceful. Look at post Feudal UK, how it exploded into prosparity. In UK by mid 1800s 90+ percent of citizens were LITERATE! In the 1960s MENA 10% were, 100 years later – Feudalism (which all MENA was till 1960s) was not a good thing.
Sorry to ramble on so long – typing stream of consciousness junk comes too easy to me…
“The countries in the decile with the strongest property rights have an average income of over $55,457. That figure is 125 percent higher than those nations in the second-most property-friendly decile. Similarly, the countries with the strongest property rights have an annual income 31.8 times higher than those nations with the weakest property rights.”
“Interestingly, of the four other aspects of economic freedom that the report covers—size of government, sound money, freedom to trade internationally, and regulation—it is property rights that have the strongest correlation with economic prosperity.”
China, Russia, Cuba, (pre war)Japan, all Africa, East Asia, – all the tyrannical states had Real estate in the hands of the very few. Stalin genocided the Kulaks, the small land owners, as he knew they would never be Communists, Mao killed all the land owners, and “In early 2001, former President Hugo Chavez first started to chip away at his citizens’ property rights by issuing a decree for the expropriation of private Venezuelan farmland. “To those who own the land, this land is not yours. The land is not private, but property of the nation,””
Communism’s main way to destroy a people and make them slaves is to destroy property rights.
Claus Schwab, WEF, ‘You will own nothing and you will be happy.’
Peter Francis
2 years ago
Great article, Aris Roussinos; more like this, please! Not to detract from Ibn Khaldun, there is an exacerbating factor in Syria: when the current war started, the population had quadrupled since the 1970’s and the Sunni growth rate had been higher than the Alawi growth rate. The Alawites have reacted to the Sunni uprising like a cornered rat, but that is because they know what will happen to the Alawites if the Sunnis take over.
Last edited 2 years ago by Peter Francis
Francis MacGabhann
2 years ago
Is it just me or is the impenetrable self-regard of this piece itself proof of Ibn Khaldun’s thesis?
AR likes owning the libs and it pays well currently. He probably equates Khaludun’s (actually The Prophet’s) lean and hungry tribal Arab warriors astounding conquest of the urbanized ME in the 7th C with some nascent modern Marxian proletariat. In the most recent piece, fat complacent lib EU states are mocked for erecting walls to fend off immigration. But wait! Aren’t they merely practicing asabiyya?
Why isn’t a little euro tribalism a predictable fulfillment of Khaludin’s grand theory? Even if it is too late…
Last edited 2 years ago by rick stubbs
Franz Von Peppercorn
2 years ago
I don’t know if Ari has read Peter Türkin, the man who predicted the recent unrest a few years ago, but he also makes much use of asabiyya as a concept.
Interesting, but I would argue that ethics imply society – who can be “moral” all alone? – and hence membership of a group. Moral and ethnic community have historically been coterminous, but the great experiment of Liberalism has been to extract morality from its complex ethnic mesh and apply it, in rational, pared down form, to humankind. The assumption is that humanity can always recognise itself as such, a point explicitly denied by both the hard right and the far left. For the right, exemplified by Joseph de Maistre, our ethno-cultural loyalties were too essential to our “moral character”, to be shed; whilst the left increasingly sees the whole idea of “humanity” as “western” and hence “imperial” in global reach. Yes, they are both crazy – but so are the Liberals! For whilst we can recognize each other as human, pesky differences nevertheless loom large, and greatly trouble the humanist project; whilst many of those currently defending the Liberal order refer increasingly to its “Judaeo-Christian” foundations, which makes the Left’s point. A modified conservative position, which allows the humanity of all whilst understanding that many subsequent social choices are culturally particular and hence incommensurable, strikes me as the most obvious, most painless path out of the thicket. This would imply a withdrawal from foreign adventure and a gradually closing down of mass immigration. Sadly, the Left-Liberal alliance, which runs the west, is instead doubling down on the attempt to produce an “ideological” world community to replace the old ethno-cultural loyalties of the west, whilst hoping that it can be sufficiently divorced from its “Athens-Rome-Jerusalem” beginnings to “include” everyone: a “Rainbow Coalition of the Willing.” By a very natural paradox, it appeals to nobody beyond its preachers.
Couple things. The Liberal/Left are Postmodernist, they come from the Nietzsche side of secular humanism, with Freud and Merx thrown in, and so are Moral Relativists with Situational Ethics coupled with Critical Theory which discounts the existence of real, or ultimate, truth, but only in personal truth. Correct and incorrect are the moral compass, and that needle spins as it is jiggled.
They have used entryism to take the MSM, Entertainment, education, education, political industries, and are on a Nihilist mission to tear down traditional society, wile having no concept of what will replace it.
We are in a sick world now, Liberalism is evil, and it has immense soft power, and they use mass migration to break society, as this allows a minority to take total control, as the majority no longer exists, so it is power to the most aggressive and dirty group, which in this day is Liberals.
An excellent article. Understandably Roussinos compares his analysis with that of the nation-builders who expected a strong democracy to emerge with Saddam Hussein’s death. He could also have challenged the analysts who hold that Syria was a stable country until the US and Saudi Arabia got involved and that Assad has majority support.
‘asabayya’ ?
Why not ‘qabila’?
Or just plain ‘tribe’
And Assad worked in “our” NHS and so is beyond criticism
An excellent article, but downplays the power of Baathism to avert political conflict. Assad’s 2012 constitution abandoned the one party state, although only communist and socialist parties were able to compete. Western observers must have been surprised by the ban on religious parties, too. Baathism was secular, socialist and nationalist.The comments on the weakness of civil society under Islam struck me. The four Muslim countrues I lived and worked in all exhibited this. More such articles please.
— Ibn Khaldun
Enlightening, apposite and timely.
Nice but slightly meandering. While the whole circle of life, as explained by asabiyya, is fascinating, the events in modern life are far too intricate to be explained away by this concept.
In their (mistitled) book “Why nations Fail” Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson argue that institutions have very considerable inertia. So when Rhodesia became independent the “extractive” (their word) institutions of the colonial regime were taken over and – this is the killer – actually made worse by Mugabe and not doubt by his successor Emmerson “Crocodile” Mnangagwa.
Insitutional inertia from colonialist extractive regimes can explain the regimes of the Middle East as well as South Africa and Zimbabwe not to mention Mexico (land of the conquistadors).
This is not to deny the Khaldunian cycle, but instituional inertia is more a general an explanation. Acemoglu do not say much about what preceded European colonialism, but for the Middle East the present piece suggests you can go back much firther finding the same cycle of one extractive regime following another with – in some cases at least – the colonial period being less extractive than most.
One final point: Acemoglu talks of “critical junctures”, moments when a new direction is possible (the Industrial Revolution is one), and at such junctures individuals can count. So it is not all impersonal forces.
A nice artiicle – thanks.
Khaldun seems a hoot, but why did he name his masterwork after an Australian light nut?
Good article btw.
You need to add that to his wiki page, such is the standard of wiki now days it would fit right in.
‘Khaldun, that 1400s Muslim Polymath is widely regarded as a ‘Hoot’ and his masterwork, named after an Australian light nut, is thought to be….’
“…is thought to be Muqaddima…”
If you have not, you should get a copy of:
“ArabianSands is Wilfred Thesiger’s record of his extraordinary journey through the parched “Empty Quarter” of Arabia. Educated at Eton and Oxford, Thesiger was repulsed by the softness and rigidity of Western life—”the machines, the calling cards, the meticulously aligned streets.” In the spirit of T. E. Lawrence, he set out to explore the”
Thesiger devotes much of his thought on this great cyclical Arab migration. During his life with the Bedouin, and his walk across Arabia, he exactly described this Nomadic migration in waves. Leaving the Oman he traveled through the Empty Quarter – and how tribes would be pushed into the desert, becoming hardened, and to him, purified, and migrating North they eventually wash up into the agricultural parts of Iraq and the Levant, and take them, wile more tribes are moving from Oman into the desert, becoming hard and pure, as the ones in Damascus and Jordan become soft…..
A fantastic read, and his other books – Excellent, he only died a couple decades ago, and used to talk at the Royal Geographic Society occasionally (I have signed books from those), one of the world’s most remarkable peoples.
It was the Post WWII Western action in Iraq and Syria which led to all this mess according to one book I read, on how all land, and the towns, cities, were owned in feudal manner, as is always done in Muslim nations. The houses in the towns owned by the Sheik, the agriculture land also, all the people mere tenant farmers and renters. Tenancy was hereditary – BUT NONE OF THIS WAS IN WRITING, all just traditional.
This was identical to Japan Post WWII, all the farmers mere poor tenants of the upper classes. MacArthur redistributed the land. He did it to stop Communism which was sweeping in – and so forced the sale of the land for almost nothing to the tenants, and gave cheap loans to them to do it. (The landowners basically had it taken from them for pennies). Now the peasant people of Japan were enfranchised, they had reason to build and work hard and make the country strong.
In Arabia the Westerners did not do this, instead they turned the land over to local strong men to administer, and so it sort of worked as collectives, say, and that meant the people were even less enfranchised as they still did not own their land – BUT also had lost their traditional rights to the land their families had worked for generations.
MacArthur Unified the Japanese people by enfranchising them by land ownership. The ones managing rebuilding Arabia did the opposite! How exactly like the rebuilding of Iraq after the last war it was.
Also the Alawites used the system Trotsky has always promoted, Entryism. It is how the Western nu-dictators have taken USA by Entryism taking over the Universities, Media and Political machines, and so a small minority ends up with ultimate power. That the method of Entryism is not talked of shows how little people understand the world. My guess is the Elites who have taken the education, MSM, Social Media, and Politics are using the method talked here, the divide and conquer, the bringing on massed outsiders, to destroy a civilization. The Liberal/Left are on a Mission to destroy the West, and I am sure they know Ibn Khaldun, as they do Trotsky and Marx, and are very well on their way. Diversity is not strength, it is division.
After WWII? In Arabia? Your theories are not based on fact.
Sorry, I should have said the lands of the Arabs, not Arabia. Sikes-Picot made ‘Arabia’ end at the Arabian peninsula, an artificial line, and gave Syria to France.
And it was the ‘Mandate for Mesopotamia’ 1920-1930s post WWI set (after Taking out the Ottomans) and later up the Hashmite Kingship covering all the disparate peoples of Iraq under the one ruler, and cutting off ‘Arabia’, that began it – and as you know a stream of rulers after 1958 when the monarchy ended (I knew his grand daughter, Faysal’s)
I know there was not an occupation of Iraq like Japan, but the British/French managed it and Americans later, from post WWI picked and influenced the leaders through the 1950s – and if they had left things alone, or just went the mile to fix the broken places they administered, rather than setting borders and appointing strong men, the Middle East would be likely, a better place.
Imposing 1/2 democracy 1/2 strong men was failure. Break the traditional system, make it half way based on Western ways and the rest chaotic, yet traditional, did not work, cannot work.
But then I always blame the modern world on President Trueman, fallowing FDRs policy of Breaking Europe post WWII. He let Russia have all East Europe by refusing to invade Greece, which Churchill pleaded with him to do (instead the 4th invasion was Marseille, and did NOTHING) and so Russia got Southern East Europe and Caucasus and Balkans, – and his slowing of Patton gave Russia North East Europe – I think this was to BREAK Europe as a power. Then he forced all Colonies to be let go – this also broke Europe intentionally, as the markets were a necessity – the thing is the colonies were not ready for Self Governing yet – But Trueman forced it on Europe, and this hurt all the ex-colonies greatly.
So I am as always a conspiracy loon, and think the world is not run for good governing, but for ulterior reasons. I see the evil Dulls brothers all over Iran (there was Mossadegh, and more) and then all the MENA.
The British governed the Iraq region 30 years, fixed who ruled, but never made it work – and I understand the Pan-Arabist and Communists, and other chaos of ethnic ambitions throughout – but I see the chaos throughout the MENA as all being the lack of Land Reform. If the people could ever have been Enfranchised by owning their stake in the country, and they could have, the region would be prosperous and peaceful. Look at post Feudal UK, how it exploded into prosparity. In UK by mid 1800s 90+ percent of citizens were LITERATE! In the 1960s MENA 10% were, 100 years later – Feudalism (which all MENA was till 1960s) was not a good thing.
Sorry to ramble on so long – typing stream of consciousness junk comes too easy to me…
PS
Citizen land ownership is very interesting
“The countries in the decile with the strongest property rights have an average income of over $55,457. That figure is 125 percent higher than those nations in the second-most property-friendly decile. Similarly, the countries with the strongest property rights have an annual income 31.8 times higher than those nations with the weakest property rights.”
“Interestingly, of the four other aspects of economic freedom that the report covers—size of government, sound money, freedom to trade internationally, and regulation—it is property rights that have the strongest correlation with economic prosperity.”
China, Russia, Cuba, (pre war)Japan, all Africa, East Asia, – all the tyrannical states had Real estate in the hands of the very few. Stalin genocided the Kulaks, the small land owners, as he knew they would never be Communists, Mao killed all the land owners, and “In early 2001, former President Hugo Chavez first started to chip away at his citizens’ property rights by issuing a decree for the expropriation of private Venezuelan farmland. “To those who own the land, this land is not yours. The land is not private, but property of the nation,””
Communism’s main way to destroy a people and make them slaves is to destroy property rights.
Claus Schwab, WEF, ‘You will own nothing and you will be happy.’
Great article, Aris Roussinos; more like this, please! Not to detract from Ibn Khaldun, there is an exacerbating factor in Syria: when the current war started, the population had quadrupled since the 1970’s and the Sunni growth rate had been higher than the Alawi growth rate. The Alawites have reacted to the Sunni uprising like a cornered rat, but that is because they know what will happen to the Alawites if the Sunnis take over.
Is it just me or is the impenetrable self-regard of this piece itself proof of Ibn Khaldun’s thesis?
AR likes owning the libs and it pays well currently. He probably equates Khaludun’s (actually The Prophet’s) lean and hungry tribal Arab warriors astounding conquest of the urbanized ME in the 7th C with some nascent modern Marxian proletariat. In the most recent piece, fat complacent lib EU states are mocked for erecting walls to fend off immigration. But wait! Aren’t they merely practicing asabiyya?
Why isn’t a little euro tribalism a predictable fulfillment of Khaludin’s grand theory? Even if it is too late…
I don’t know if Ari has read Peter Türkin, the man who predicted the recent unrest a few years ago, but he also makes much use of asabiyya as a concept.