Encounter of History and Modernity

Abdulrahman bin Mohammad bin Khaldun Al-Hadrami, (1332-1406), generally known as Ibn Khaldun, was an Islamic theologian, scholar, and jurist internationally known as the father of sociology. His book, the world-renown Muqaddimah (The Introduction), is considered the breeding ground for numerous disciplines of study, including the social sciences, the philosophy of history, historiography, social history, demography, and economics. Mohammad Jaber Al-Ansari, a Bahraini professor of Islamic and Cultural Studies at the Arabian Gulf University in the Kingdom of Bahrain and, since 2000, the Advisor for Cultural and Scientific Affairs to the King of Bahrain, is a leading and highly respected Arab intellectual and the author of twenty-one books, well-known and widely-read throughout the expanse of the Arab world. His intellectual treatises have been honored by numerous Arab governments and intellectual organizations, and he has received a number of prestigious awards for his social, political, and cultural contributions to modern Arabic intellectualism. This book is the encounter between these two Arab minds, six centuries apart, trying to connect the past to the present, as Al-Ansari attempts to sow the seeds of Khaldunism, with its dimensions of modernity, in the public consciousness in order to establish a culture of reason and rationality in the modern Arab world. Only then, as Al-Ansari states, can the Arabs move forward, by understanding and analyzing the flaws of the past to make way for a better future. "If there were anyone to be considered the best representative of Ibn Khaldun's way of thinking in the 20th century, Mohammad Jaber Al-Ansari would definitely be one of them." Khalid Al Harub - Khulood Amro Cambridge Book Review "Electric shocks for the Arab mind...Al-Ansari threw out a burning ball of ideas...will Arab intellectuals consider it or will they be afraid of burning their hands?" Saudi Minister and poet Dr. Ghazi Al-Gosaibi