Western civilization in the Islamic thought of Malek Bennabi

Abstract

The intellectual writings of Bennabi examined Western civilization in terms of advantages and drawbacks, explaining the right way to revive contemporary Islamic civilization by taking advantage of the positive aspects of Western civilization and focusing on the authentic civilizational construction of the rising Islamic civilization, and interacting with the contemporary facts and its progress. From the critical perspective of Malek Bennabi, studying, understanding and dissecting the virtues and shortcomings of universal Western civilization is an important threshold, which helps understand the causes of contemporary human problems in general and the current Islamic civilizational problem in particular. Actually, Islam, with all its sound human and civilizational values and high principles including peace, brotherhood justice, equality and love, can be thanks to the true believers‟ forearms a universal Islamic civilization that will become a safe haven for all humanity.Bennabi‟s ideas provided great hope and optimism, as he emphasized that no matter how much the Muslim world suffered from the scourges of underdevelopment and cultural, intellectual, political, economic, social decay and “colonizability”, it could recover. This can be achieved if it adhered to the Quranic rule, calling for transformation, change and innovation from the human soul at home to the change of the world abroad, while abiding by the conditions of innovation and cultural renaissance, embodied in the construction of creative Man, investing in soil and taking care of time- that precious treasure.