Civilization and its enemy

Abstract

Ibn Khaldun's scholarship has received universal accolade and probably will continue to do so long into the future. But in the eyes of contemporaries, his scholarly reflections seemed like an affront to the traditional order as well as a challenge to its epistemological foundation. Indeed, many of the radical ideas he had espoused foreshadowed modernity, but he was not a revolutionary avant-guarde. To the contrary, he explained historical change in terms of a cycle charting the course of dynastic growth and decline, which he had likened to the living organism. Modernity, by contrast, while rejecting the cyclical worldview adopted a linear vision of the future predicated on the enlightenment ideals, European rationalism, and scientific thoughts. Their downside, however, had been well in evidence in the growing disenchantment over the excesses of modem sciences and technology, and their horrific impacts as demonstrated by the weapons of mass destruction in the last century.