The Senility of Group Solidarity and Contemporary Multiculturalism: A Word of Warning from a Medieval Arabic Thinker

• Published date: 01 March 2019
• Author: Annalisa Verza
• Date: 01 March 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/raju.12199

The Senility of Group Solidarity and

Contemporary Multiculturalism:

A Word of Warning from a Medieval

Arabic Thinker

ANNALISA VERZA

Abstract. This paper discusses the thought of the medieval Maghrebin thinker Ibn

Khaldun through the prism of the philosophy and sociology of law and politics. I

will first try to illustrate how, even if Ibn Khaldun wrote in the fourteenth century, he

anticipated many core concepts that are characteristic of modernWestern sociological

and philosophical thought. The argument is thus made that his thought can, and

indeed must, be rescued from the wide neglect that, outside the specialized field of

Khaldunian studies, it has so far suffered in our treatment and teaching of the history

of politico-legal sociological thought. I will then claim that the scheme he devised to

explain the rise and fall of civilizations can also, with due care, be used to frame and

understand the political and cultural landscape in which the West and the Islamic

world are presently engaged in a difficult dialogue. The discussion is in this sense

offered in the hope of making a contribution to the current politico-legal philosophi-

cal and sociological debate on multiculturalism, andon the limits of its scope.

Even if an individual tribe has different “houses” and

many diverse group feelings, still, there must exist a

group feeling that is stronger than all the other

group feelings combined, [...]and in which all the

diverse group feeling coalesce, as it were, to become

one greater group feeling. Otherwise, splits would

occur and lead to dissension and strife.

—Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah III, 16

1. Premise

1

In this essay I illustrate the salient features of a conception at once philosophical,

sociological, and political that in the fourteenth century was developed by Ibn

1

This paper was written as a contribution to the PRIN project “Soggetti di diritto e

vulnerabilit

a: Modelli istituzionali e concetti giuridiciin trasformazione.”

Ratio Juris. Vol. 32 No. 1 March 2019 (76–101)

© 2018 The Author. Ratio Juris © 2018 John Wile y & Sons Ltd.

Khaldun. For about a century now he has increasingly been attracting the interest

of philosophers, historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and politicians, especially

in the West. For as much as he is properly described as an Islamic thinker, he has

anticipated certain core concepts that are characteristic of Western thought—con-

cepts classically associated with the work of Montesquieu,

2

Vico,

3

Marx,

4

Weber,

5

Durkheim,

6

Oppenheimer,

7

and others.

In addition to pointing out the interest this thinker sparks, and the need to give

him his due place in the current expositions of the history of political-legal socio-

logical thought, I will be focusing on the scheme he devised for explaining the rise

and fall of civilizations, proposing it as useful even today in framing and under-

standing the current political and cultural landscape that, in a difficult dialogue, is

now engaging the two sides in question: the West, and that very Islamic world that

almost seven centuries ago was home to Ibn Khaldun.

In delving into his thought, we will not be looking through the prism of the

Arabist or the historian of Islam or of Muslim thought. Rather, we will be

approaching the subject with an interest in the philosophy and sociology of law

and politics, from a vantage point that will enable us to pick out the universalizable

parts of this theory that can still be found to hold good even today, so as to see

whether the insights they offer can be brought to bear on the current debate on the

multicultural paradigm of justice, and on related problems.

2. Cultures in Comparison

Today in the West—with politics and law following a path of growing internation-

alization, and the long wave of migration showing its full impact—we are increas-

ingly witnessing a blurring of the distinction between the rule and the exception

2

Like Montesquieu, IbnKhaldun proceeds in histheorizing from the premise that man’scharac-

ter, attitudes, and abilities are the product of the environment and of habits steeped in the social

culture.This explains why oneof his first Western commentators,Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall,

in an 1812 study called him the “Montesquieu of the Arabs” (von Ham mer-Purgstall 1812, 360).

3

Ibn Khaldun’s account of historic cycles bears a clear resemblance to Vico’s, even though in

place of Vico’s “providence” we find in Ibn Khaldunthe idea of an intrinsic law of social devel-

opment. On this point, see in particular Ben Salem 1973; Gumplowicz 189921928, 90–114; and

Soyer and Gilber t 2012.

4

Like Marx, IbnKhaldun underlines the key role playedby the material elements—firstamong

which labour and the various aspects of making a living—in explaining the passage from one

way of life, withits core values, to another. Onthis question, see esp. Lacoste1984.

5

Like Weber, Ibn Khaldun insists from the first pages of his Muqaddimah on the importanceof

the distinction between scientific description and moral/political evaluation. Moreover, he

makes extensiveuse of concepts that fall neatlyinto the Weberian category of ideal types.

6

Most striking,to my mind, are the resemblancesthat Ibn Khaldun’s conceptof asabiyya and its

dynamic transformation in rural and urban situations bears to Durkheim’s famous distinction

between mechanicand organic solidarity. This strongresemblance can actually be explained by

pointing out thatDurkheim was perfectly aware ofIbn Khaldun’s theory. Some authorshave in

fact suggested that Ibn Khaldun’s theory might actually have been the source of Durkheim’s

insights. See Gellner 1996, 202. Other important similarities lie in the two authors’ descriptions

of the dynamicof domination and in their analysisof the cohesive role of religion.For an overall

comparison,see, e.g., Baali 1988.

7

See the enthusiastic appraisal of Ibn Khaldun’s theory in Oppenheimer 19222

andvol.4,pp.251ff.

77

Ratio Juris, Vol. 32, No. 1 © 2018 The Author. Ratio Juris © 2018 John Wile y & Sons Ltd.

A Word of Warning from a Medieval Arabic Thinker

1935, vol. 2, pp. 173ff.,