Managing Tribalism in Our Lives: Some Insights from Arab Thought

by ADAM ZEIDAN

ORTHODOX COMMUNITIES today are faced with all sorts of existential concerns. The Orthodox Church struggles to retain regular parishioners, especially in the old countries and among cradle Orthodox. Even in Moscow, with its population of 12 million, where romanticized notions of Orthodoxy have made the faith a central component of Russian identity in recent years, estimates for church attendance on Christmas sit around 300,000—or 2.5%. For many of us, our Orthodox communities become a means of preserving traditions and communities that are scarce in this country, but that make us feel at home.

And so we work to protect our communities from dissipating and to uphold the uniqueness of our faith. In so doing, we build strong ties to each other, work vigorously to support one another, and proudly share our cultures with outsiders at our annual festivals. At the same time, however, our efforts can inadvertently end up with us putting our Orthodox identity before Christ, or even creating an atmosphere of exclusivity that makes outsiders feel unwelcome. While it is important for us to take care of our community, we must be mindful of how our actions affect outsiders and aim to strike a balance between building strong communities and excluding others.

In the Arab world, taking care of our community and mistreating outsiders are both caught up in the concept of aşabiyyah—often translated as something along the lines of “tribalism, but actually a term that has long proved difficult to translate with accuracy. By far the most developed treatment of this concept comes from Ibn Khaldun, a fourteenthcentury historiographer sometimes cited as a forerunner of modern sociology. For Ibn Khaldun, aşabiyyah is both the basis for and the engine of civilization. It is a natural component of human nature and society to be embraced, understood, and managed. Yet before him, Islamic doctrine had explicitly condemned aşabiyyah as an unwanted social ill, causing division, conflict, and oppression. So while this term indeed approaches Western notions of tribalism, it’s both more comprehensive and more volatile.

The good aspects of aşabiyyah are ones we as Orthodox Christians can easily relate to. At its core, aşabiyyah is the connection of a shared fate you feel between you and your neighbor. Natural ties, such as kinship, tend to be the strongest. You likely feel closer to your parents, your children, your brother, and your sister than you do to family friends. At the same time, though, there is nothing precluding you from feeling a connection and a shared fate with a complete stranger. While you feel closer to your own family, you likely feel an affinity for your countrymen or for your fellow Orthodox Christians on the other side of the world, even if you have never met them. The feeling of being connected by a shared fate is not confined to people you know; you innately feel connected in such a way to people you do not know and will never meet.

The Conference of the Birds Poem by Farid ud-Din Attar, c. 1177. Illustrated manuscript by Habiballah of Sava, c. 1600. Ink, opaque watercolor, gold, and silver on paper. In this classic of Sufi poetry, the sovereignless birds of the world gather as a community to seek the legendary Simorgh (pictured above), whom they'll ask to be their king. After trials, personal failings, and death dwindle their number to thirty remaining seekers, they encounter the Simorgh (Persian; literally thirty si birds morgh), whose likeness they realize is already reflected in them, but veiled by their own flaws and prejudices.

This feeling motivates us to take care of one another. It is the reason we share our homes with our families, raise funds for common endeavors, maintain public schools, and even join the military. It is why we give gifts and establish safety nets. It is why we pool our resources as a family, as a church community, or as a society. Aşabiyyah— feeling a connection with others through a shared fate—is responsible for us caring for one another.

Ideally, the broadest form of aşabiyyah is the connection we feel to all human beings. Christ our God taught us that all the Law hangs on two commandments: that we love God with all our hearts and love our neighbor as ourselves. And indeed, Orthodox theology teaches that we owe respect, dignity, and love to every human person by the simple virtue of sharing a common human nature—and because each one of us is the icon and image of Christ. When He said, “whatever you did not do for the least of these, you did not do to Me,” He signaled that all our fates are intertwined through Him.

This same sort of love is still reflected very strongly in Arab culture. When you visit an Arab home, your hosts will insist you eat until you are stuffed. If there is not enough food to go around, they will eat less (or even nothing at all) just to ensure you are well-nourished. Even the children might be made to go with less food, a matter that we will return to later. If you don’t eat much, they will assume you do not like what they have given you and will feel guilty for not offering you something better.

But on the other side of the coin, Islamic tradition recognizes undesirable aspects of aşabiyyah. The Qur’an offers innumerable guidelines on family relations, neighborly conduct, and social justice. The commitment to social welfare in Islam is reflected in the fact that the Muslim community is referred to as “the nation.” There can be no doubt that the religion invokes the same sort of love for one’s neighbor as described above, and that the commitment to loving one’s neighbor is strong within Islam. Yet at the same time, Muhammad is said to have compared aşabiyyah to an outright ignorance of God’s message, calling to mind Arab societies prior to Islam. In those times, people had been so committed to their loved ones that feuds between families and tribes were frequent, and retribution was never-ending. It also led to the purposeful oppression of enemies. Defensive, divisive, and destructive, this staunch commitment was incompatible with the universalism of Islam.

The takeaway is a clear one that resounds with the Orthodox as well: we cannot be selective about whom we love. Protecting your family or your community can easily turn into violence and oppression against others, motivated by insecurity. When we feel we are under threat, it is easy for us to get lost in a mentality of “it’s either us or them.” Among the Orthodox in the United States, our good intentions of preserving our traditions and communities have led to accusations of phyletism—equating our religion with our ethnicity and producing an unwelcoming environment for members of other ethnicities.

Ibn Khaldun Engraved portrait of Ibn Khaldun, based on current 10 Dinar banknote from his native Tunisia.

Sometimes we can tell what is good when it involves a selfless sacrifice against oneself and one’s tribe and going against those ties that are naturally stronger. When you take on (reasonable) harm to yourself or your family in order to help a stranger, you are not rejecting your aşabiyyah for those close to you, but rather you are extending it to include that stranger. When parents let their children go hungry for the night to satisfy a stranger’s hunger instead, as mentioned earlier, they are defying their natural instinct, which is to take care of themselves and their families first. Instead, they are putting their trust in a shared fate, and that which benefits the stranger ultimately benefits the community at large and the greater good. It is trusting that the stranger would return the favor if given the opportunity.

The lesson of aşabiyyah, then, is central to Orthodoxy. Coming together to provide support, comfort, and protection not only for our loved ones, but for complete strangers as well, is an essential aspect of our worship, and a demonstration of our faith in our shared connection through Christ. On the other hand, when we are loving some people more than others, we end up excluding strangers and perhaps hoarding resources, or even oppressing others. This is a lack of faith in our shared connection with one another, which is, in fact, Christ. The balance is not always easy to find, but it is our duty to be on guard against the harm that loving our families and communities selectively can cause to others.

Adam Zeidan is a PhD candidate in the Department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures at the Catholic University of America and Assistant Editor at EncyclopædiaBritannica. He is a parishioner at St.Makarios the Great Orthodox Mission in Chicago.