Books-in-Brief: The Socio-Intellectual Foundations of Malek Bennabi’s Approach to Civilization

IIIT Books-In-Brief Series is a valuable collection of the Institute’s key publications written in condensed form to give readers a core understanding of the main contents
of the original.

Renowned Algerian intellectual and scholar Malek Bennabi (1905–1973), was concerned with unravelling the causes of Muslim decline and the reasons for Western civilization’s success and achievements. The key problem he theorized lay not in the Qur’an or the Islamic faith but in Muslims themselves.
This study investigates Bennabi’s approach to civilization using metatheorizing methodology to examine his thesis and shed further light on perhaps one of the more intriguing elements of his theory, that civilization is governed by internal-external and social-intellectual factors and that an equation can be generated for civilization itself.
This equation of Man+Soil+Time = Civilization and of which religion forms the all-important catalyst, is analyzed and its significance in terms of the reversal of Muslim decline evaluated. What is clearly apparent is that for Bennabi, Man is the central force in any civilizing process and without him the other two elements are of no value.
With regard to outcomes, Bennabi’s unfailing and unerring conviction that unless Muslims change their spiritual condition they cannot effect any far-reaching, meaningful change in society is echoed in the Qur’anic verse: “Verily, never will Allah change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves” (13:11).