Understanding the world gone off its hinges through the window of Ibn Khaldun

Many of the things we see in the times we are living through are perhaps of a kind we are experiencing for the first time in our own lifetimes. Undoubtedly, many others keep giving us the impression of déjà vu, making us feel that we are going round and round and living the same things again.

When we come across things that go beyond, and do not fit at all with, those events of the nature of "recurrence" that we perceive, on the basis of what we have lived before, as a custom, a routine, even a rule, we are greatly surprised, we are left in amazement, and we say "the world's nail has come out" (the world has gone off its hinges). Of course, if we find these developments negative, if a new practice has emerged by trampling on rules, traditions and customs we thought were solid...

No, if we have found what we have lived through positive, if we have encountered a development that breaks the aspects of the tradition, custom, usage, rule or established order valid until now that made us uncomfortable, then we welcome it by calling it a "revolution."

Trump's practices, which with an utterly aggressive attitude, in disregard of 300 years of American political tradition, recognize no rule, value or custom, are today giving not only ABD but the whole world a serious experience of "deviating from the trajectory of history." There will of course be those who can call this a revolution too, but the secular world order, in which Israel is included and in which it is so-called pampered to this extent, is tearing down all the images it has nurtured, and indeed of itself. By which inference of which social science theory can the Israeli state and society, and the treatment they receive in today's international order, be explained?

Even the postmodernist approach, which emerged with a chaos theory at the place where all the incomprehensible things pile up, has almost run its course before getting any chance to explain anything or to diagnose an order, even a chaotic one, in the developments of the world.

Of course there is no possibility of anything in the world being absolutely unprecedented. Recurring things will be found in the social sphere too, and the task of the social scientist and the historian is to find these recurring things and to identify the rules, periods and regularities they are subject to. Everyone appreciates that the one who did this for the first time in the history of social science, and in the strongest way, was Ibn Khaldun. He developed the science that revealed what does not change despite everything that changes, what recurs throughout history, and, while recurring, also some very fundamental sunnahs (sunnatullah) concerning human beings. Thus he had hoped that humanity would draw lessons from what it lived through, and that an awareness would develop of the conditions in which what befell those before us could befall us.

Of course, whatever he does, what we call awareness is not something that some people of learning can cook up somewhere and force-feed to people. There is nothing that can be taken by force from those who have no intention of truly receiving a share of that knowledge. Precisely for this reason, however advanced countries, social movements and powerful states may be in science, technology, art or urban planning, it becomes inevitable that they are overtaken by the fate awaiting them.

But this knowledge nevertheless exists for those who wish to receive a share of it. Its foundation is revelation. In Ibn Khaldun there is a cyclicality that was sought to be captured by drawing inspiration from that revelation and by looking at lived experiences from a broad historical perspective. What kind of cyclicality are the things we are living through today subject to, both at the level of international relations and at the level of our own internal relations? This needs to be thought through more deeply, together with a more competent layer of scholarship.

Among the several academic-intellectual events I mentioned last weekend, I had said that one was the 5th International Ibn Khaldun Symposium held at Ibn Haldun University. Many of my readers had asked whether I would, among the other events, specifically address this one too. Frankly, it would be a great injustice to pass over such an event by merely saying "I attended, it was good, it was nice."

Although Ibn Khaldun is a very great value, (without ever sanctifying him and without ever attributing to him infallibility or immunity from criticism), we know that there has been no coherent, serious research discipline or interest concerning him. In Turkey, beyond the known works of Ahmet Arslan, Ümit Hassan-İbrahim Erol Kozak and Süleyman Uludağ, we can say that until recently the expected contribution to the literature on him has not come. As it turns out, these serial symposiums that Ibn Haldun University holds every two years undertake a very important function with respect to the formation of a more comprehensive, broader and applied literature of science and thought around Ibn Khaldun.

The University's Rector, Prof. Recep Şentürk, explained that they had started these symposiums in 2006, even before the university was founded, as the "Ibn Khaldun community." The chairman of the university's board of trustees, N. Bilal Erdoğan, said "new paradigms are needed to better understand the world and the human being," and noted that Ibn Khaldun is a strong source of inspiration both for understanding the "world whose nail has come out" and for developing "non-linear economic models of the relationship between new economic growth and social solidarity."

The main theme of the symposium this time was set as "Power, Economic Development and Ethics: Dilemmas and Challenges." Under this main heading, in Rector Recep Şentürk's expression, an attempt was made to put forth a kind of "examples of applied Ibn Khaldunism." That is, what was done was not summarizing or relaying Ibn Khaldun, but thought experiments on how his concepts or theoretical approach could be applied under today's conditions.

Among the notable names at the symposium, where participants from all over the world presented papers and took part in discussions, were Wael B. Hallaq, Bruce Lawrence, Heba Raouf Ezzat, Prasenjit Duara, Ali Nizamuddin, Adeel Malik, Rodney Wilson, Habib Ahmed and Sabri Orman.

We said in an earlier piece that Ibn Khaldun is a thinker who wrote in Arabic but was read in Turkish. It is known that the translation by Pirizade Mehmet Sahib Efendi had been made 70 years before the period in 1806 when the famous orientalist Silvestre de Sacy relayed small excerpts from the Muqaddimah with the air of a great discovery.

Today, too, it seems to be a university from Turkey that is granted the opportunity to read Ibn Khaldun as he deserves, to understand him, and to form a discipline of learning around him. However you look at it, this is a very beautiful event.