ings and military dictators will see in the new century, their numbers will dwindle. With the passing of old rulers their ranks are thinned further. Neither really has sanction in Islam itself, and the populist leaders ceaselessly challenge them from inside society. What then is going on? What factors are encouraging the dramatic changes in leadership, and how will they impact on the rest of the world?Perhaps Ibn Khaldun, the medieval Muslim scholar, can give us a hint. Ibn Khaldun spoke of asabiyah or social cohesion, as binding groups together through a common language, culture, and code of behavior. Asabiyah is what traditional societies possess, but which is broken down in urbanized society over a period of time. Ibn Khaldun famously suggested that rural and tribal peoples come down from the mountains to urban areas and three generations on, as they absorb the manners and values of urban life, they lose their special quality of social cohesion and become effete and therefore vulnerable to new invasions from the hills. This cyclical, if over-simplified, pattern held for centuries up to the advent of European colonialism. Even the disruptive force of European imperialism over the last two centuries did not break the cycle.It was only after independence from the European colonial powers after the Second World War, that Ibn Khaldun's cycle was seriously affected. It is now drying up at source. Urbanization, demographic changes, a population explosion, migrations abroad and, perhaps most significantly, new and often alien ideas and images, at once seductive and repellent, and all instantly communicated from the West, are contributing to the breakdown.The recent dramatic growth in population has favored populist Muslim leadership with its power base in the tribal and rural areas, and strengthened it against the cities with their ideas of liberalism, modernity and secularism. This is partly because the modern state simply fails to provide ...
