Why Ibn Khaldun Still Matters

Posted On Oct 26 2024

The Ibn Khaldun Center seeks to study public policy as if Ibn Khaldun’s ideas and legacy still matter. We believe that some of the elements that characterize the seminal works of the great Muslim scholar, philosopher, jurist, sociologist, and historian are still relevant for guiding public policy and can serve as a point of departure to evaluate the efficacy and normative worth of contemporary public policy. The elements that characterize Ibn Khaldun’s work, though not unique, were a significant departure from traditional Islamic thought and brought a new sociological and empirical dimension to Muslim thought.

We feel that his attention to civilization as a measure of human development, empirical reality, rational thought, and historical perspective are key elements that are essential for good social science and public policy. In recent years we have seen the emergence of the discourse on civilizational states that underscores the endurance of this idea first advanced so thoughtfully and rigorously by Ibn Khaldun in his “Muqaddimah.” He integrated historical perspective, empirical reality, and normative analysis in his study of the emergence and decline of civilizations.

The current rapid urbanization and growth of new digital technologies are creating smart cities that generate new forms of sovereignty and collectivities. Ibn Khaldun’s idea of asabiyyah – a sense of collective identity and purpose that engendered solidarity and, eventually, the formation of states, cities, and civilization itself – allows us to reimagine connectivity as the new source of collectivity and driver of solidarity for development and growth.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution

We are living in the era of the fourth industrial revolution, which is both rapid and robust thanks to the growth spurt in artificial intelligence and the widespread awareness and use of AI-based applications. The speed of change is unprecedented and possibilities unlimited. We now live in a world where billions of people, their devices, and stored knowledge are intimately connected and empowered by computing power that exponentially raises productivity.

While the digital revolution is dramatic and transformative, there is another gradual, global, decades-long change taking place that is completely upending the demands for good governance: urbanization. Cities everywhere are growing rapidly, creating megacities; many of them have populations larger than some countries. With the connectivity provided by globalization, transportation, liberalization, and digital revolution, these megacities have also become global cities. It is these cities that are becoming centers of technology, investment, diplomacy, innovation, and power. And when urbanization met digitization, it gave birth to smart cities.

It won’t be long before mayors of these gigantic smart cities will appoint security advisers who will have more power and reach than national security advisers. Already we are witnessing cities becoming independent of their federal governments and forging international partnerships much to the chagrin of states and the United Nations. The World Economic Forum has recently acknowledged how cities are transforming how we do foreign policy and diplomacy.

The shift in sovereignty and power from state to cities has been dramatically highlighted in political and legal battles over borders and immigration policy between the federal government and sanctuary cities over immigration policies. Another dramatic example of the growing power of cities is the extensive counterterrorism, intelligence gathering, and surveillance capability now possessed by the police department of New York City that many medium-sized European nations would envy. Though these examples are within the United States, the growing power of cities is global and ubiquitous.

The United Nations is aware of this shift. The international body is contemplating harnessing the power of city diplomacy as cities have launched thousands of transnational initiatives and formed hundreds of city networks, bypassing states and sometimes even against the wishes of central governments. The U.N. is considering creating an alternate body called the U.N. Urban to acknowledge and work with this shift in governance to cities.

What Drives the Power of Cities?

We are rapidly becoming an urban planet. In 1800, only 3 percent of the world’s population lived in cities. In 2008, 50 percent of the world’s population lived in cities, and in 2050 it will be about 70 percent. Current figures show that 10 percent of Pakistan’s population lives in Karachi and contributes 20 percent of its GDP. Similarly, about 11 percent of Morocco’s population lives in Casablanca and contributes 32 percent of the country’s GDP. Tehran, with 10 percent of Iran’s population, has a 30 percent share in its GDP. Istanbul now has 20 percent of Türkiye’s population, and it contributes 31 percent of Türkiye’s GDP. Only 35 countries have a bigger GDP than Istanbul at $350 billion; this city is on par with nations like Israel and Malaysia. No wonder elections for political control of Istanbul are always so contentious.

Control and governance of major cities is critical because they shape the economy, culture, and hence the politics of nations more than the states themselves. This goes beyond the Muslim world; it is global. For example, New York City’s annual GDP exceeds $1.75 trillion, topping Australia’s, Spain’s, Saudi Arabia’s, and 170 other countries’ GDPs. and 170 other nations. Only 12 nations have economies that are bigger than the Big Apple.

The expansion of urban economies, the potential for jobs, and the need for workers are leading to exponential population growth in cities. But this economic growth comes from two critical economic trends: innovation in and rapid development of the tech sector, and the expansion of the service sector – particularly the financial sector. With rapid urbanization and dramatic shifts in demography and means of production, governance too is becoming increasingly dependent on technology, big data, and the “internet of things” and thus continues innovation in how public goods are defined and delivered. Urbanization and its demand for smart city governance is creating a new way of living, and this will necessitate new ways of thinking about and dealing with global politics, the global economy, trade and migration, international security, and war and peace.

Connectivity and Social Justice: The New Asabiyyah

To move past the old Westphalian nation state-based models of international politics, we should examine the emerging city-centered world through the lens of Ibn Khaldun. Ibn Khaldun looked at politics and political development at the level of cities. To Ibn Khaldun, urbanization was the beginning of civilization; cities were places where art, science, and culture came to fruition. But importantly, he argued that such powerful cities would only emerge after the emergence of asabiyyah, or solidarity based on a collective identity – usually ethnic, tribal, or religious.

But in this age of rebalanced globalization, these sovereign cities must be diverse and multicultural. Traditional asabiyyah-based politics are their prime nemesis.

So how can these cities maintain a shared identity while attracting talent from all over the world? They will need a new form of asabiyyah – one based on technological innovation, the driving force behind the cities’ growth. Connectivity is the new virtue and the new basis of solidarity. These cities are already creating a shared purpose through social justice campaigns run on tech, namely social media. (For example, the pro-Palestinian “uncommitted” campaign is primarily organized in WhatsApp.) Networking technology is creating the newest version of asabiyyah by uniting cities around common values. By 2030, 500 billion devices will be communicating with each other using the internet of things. The citizens and smart things of these cities will be connected to each other, and more cities will form networks of sovereign cities. The new world of smart cities will be based on collectivity through connectivity.

But even this new collectivity will need some form of shared values to provide the meaning and purpose that transcend cultures – even different religious traditions and political ideologies – to serve as the glue to create these urban communities. These norms have already emerged through the practice of living in highly multicultural cities like London, New York, and Dubai. They are norms based on facilitating connectivity that overcomes identity-based differences. They are a form of universal values that prioritize freedom, autonomy of the individual, social justice, mobility both geographical and social, and multiculturalism. But at the core is a minimalist idea of social justice necessary to facilitate connectivity and ensure that commerce and innovation is not hindered.

The point is that the shared values necessary for the new city to thrive will emerge organically from life in the city driven by impulses to provide a just environment and thus maximize commerce through connectivity. Cities give birth to values necessary for their survival and growth, and that is how in Ibn Khaldun’s view civilizations emerge. Asabiyyah, the solidarity that binds, emerges from within. Here, the connection between emerging collectivity and good governance becomes necessary. Governance of these cities will have to be informed by the norms of that collective, and these norms are local even though they may have global and diverse origins. So, while the particularities of past philosophers like Ibn Khaldun may not be transportable to our time and our spaces, some of their ideas – and their ways of thinking – still matter.

Dr. Muqtedar Khan is a Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Delaware. He is also a nonresident scholar with the Ibn Khaldun Center in Washington, D.C. He was the academic director of the U.S. State Department’s National Security Institute, 2016-2019 and is the academic director of the American Foreign Policy Institute, 2019-2025, at the University of Delaware. He was a Senior Nonresident Fellow of the Brookings Institution (2003-2008) and a Senior Fellow with the Center for Global Policy (2017-2020). He authored the award-winning book ”Islam and Good Governance: Political Philosophy of Ihsan,” published in April 2019 by Palgrave Macmillan.

His articles and commentaries can be found at http://www.ijtihad.org. His academic publications can be found at https://udel.academia.edu/MuqtedarKhan

He hosts a YouTube show called Khanversations at https://www.youtube.com/c/ProfMuqtedarKhan.