Libertarianism, Going Islamic By Chris Knight

     I have always disliked American libertarianism, with its hyper-individualism, which morphs into a support of corporate capitalism. Now the libertarian Cato Institute has claimed in a Tweet that “Islamic teachings are consistent [with] many libertarian principles, such as tolerance, property rights & individualism.” They also praised Ibn Khaldūn (1332-1406) as a libertarian hero, describing him as “the most consistent of the many free-market economists in Islamic history,” even though Khaldūn promoted slavery:

“Therefore, the Negro nation are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because [Negroes] have little [that is essentially] human and have attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals, as we have stated.” http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/09/07/cato-project-islam-consistent-libertarian-principles/

     In all fairness though, slavery was also supported by most of the great ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, so that should not be a specific objection to Ibn Khaldūn.

     As a matter of fact, Ibn Khaldūn was a brilliant Arab thinker, in the league of Aristotle, and is  best known for his formulation of the notion of Asabiyyah, or  “group-feeling/solidarity,” which is the fundamental building block of empires: http://www.hizb-australia.org/2016/12/rise-and-fall-of-civilisations-ibn-khalduns-historiography/.
Empires fall when their sense of group solidarity breaks down, as he detailed in the first sociology treatise: Muqaddimah.

He said:  “Civilisation needs the tribal values to survive, but these same values are destroyed by civilisation. Specifically, urban civilisation destroys tribal values with the luxuries that weaken kinship and community ties and with the artificial wants for new types of cuisine, new fashions in clothing, larger homes, and other novelties of urban life.”

     It is a great quote which well embodies the fall of the West, where the social entropy of the good life and comfort, has made Western man soft and cucky, with equally as weak ideologies and philosophies:
https://nationalvanguard.org/books/Which%20Way%20Western%20Man.pdf

     Hence Khaldūn  is so far away from contemporary libertarianism, with its love of corporate globalist capitalism, and all those who feed off of it, its stifling over-civilisation, that it is a joke to try and bring him under the libertarian umbrella. Either that or a desperate measure to keep up with the changing complexion of the West, and appeal to the latest intellectual fashions.