Asabiyya – Solidarity in the age of barbarism: An Afro-Arab-Asian alternative

Abstract

At a time when the global empire seems to show its naked aggression especially in North Africa and West Asia, as we have seen in Libya, and now in Syria, an aggression that has further dismembered these societies, manifested also in global debt, racism against immigrants, and attacks on workers’ rights, we have also been witnessing a type of ‘nativist’ violence wearing the garb of religion as reflected in the different militant groups in the region who claim to offer an alternative to corrupt and violent regimes, on the one hand, and to a violent racist global empire led by the United States, on the other. The claims of these nativist groups are that political Islam or the return to the true Islam is the only solution available, and that they want to duplicate an ideal Islamic State from the distant past. While doing so, they have further helped the global empire in further destroying local societies, and many of them have collaborated with the US and other western countries, and their proxies in the region. Worsening this situation is the neoliberal life/subject-hood that has become the spirit and norm in many societies and states in the Global South, whereby individualism and self-interest have displaced the collective/common good. In this article, and through a reading of the concept of Asabiyya as articulated by Ibn Khaldun, the author suggests an alternative response to the violent global empire, to violent religious militancy, and to neoliberalism, by discussing how the concept of Asabiyya can help in building internal solidarity within societies in the region, and possibly beyond.