ENVIRONMENT, ETHNICITY, AND SOCIAL CHANGE: CRITICISM OF ORIENTALIST GUSTAVE LE BON'S VIEWS ON THE PRE-ISLAMIC ARAB NATION

Abstract

The Arab is a great nation with a great civilization. So many studies discuss Arabs, including Westerners or Orientalists. One of them is Gustave Le Bon. Le Bon's thoughts about Arabs received positive and negative criticism from many people. This research was conducted to review the environment, ethnicity of the Arabs, and the condition of the pre-Islamic Arabs based on Le Bon's thoughts and to criticize positively and negatively Le Bon's thoughts. This research is library research with a critical study approach. The source used is the book La Civilization des Arabes by Gustave Le Bon which was translated into Arabic with the title Hadarah al-Arab. The results of this research are that Le Bon's thoughts regarding the Arabs are objective thoughts, supported by data and images so they are easy to accept. Even though many of them conflict with Islamic thinking, Le Bon conveys his thoughts with justifiable arguments. However, there are several things that Le Bon did not include in his work, such as the origins of the Arabs as a whole, only stating that the Arabs came from the Semitic race. In the end, Le Bon's thinking still received positive and negative criticism. However, it can still be used as a reference and source of reference in studying Arab civilization.