Malek Bennabi (1905-1973) was an Algerian sociologist and philosopher. His incisive writing on the sociological conditions of the Muslim world made him into a second coming of sorts of the Twelfth Century Muslim scholars and pioneer in sociology Ibn Khaldūn (1332-1406). In a series of publications under the title The Problems of Civilization, Bennabi examines the human and social factors that contributed to the rise of Muslim civilization and how these factors became diseased, leading to its gradual decline and eventual fall. He makes his conclusions in light of foundational social criteria for change in the Quran to propose a path forward for Muslims to reclaim our position as a beacon of civilization in service to God and in turn the good for humanity. The foundational premise of the entire project of Bennabi is found in the Quranic verse stating that “Certainly, God does not change the condition of a people until they change what is within their own selves.” [13:11]
The genius of Bennabi was in his polymathic base of knowledge, drawing on numerous historical examples, political theories, psychological studies, and analogies from the natural world in his analysis of the human condition. He critiqued the competing explanations offered for the same social phenomenon by academics as superficial due to being born out of allegiance to materialist political ideologies and philosophical frameworks rather than being representative of the human condition as it is.
In a lecture Bennabi delivered in 1961 titled The Justifications/Directives in Society, he shared his reflections on what makes a particular society more effective in its civilizational function than other societies in a particular era, as well as during one period of its history than in other periods. According to Bennabi, what makes a society function to its highest degree is directly related to its musawwighāt, an Arabic term that contains within it a double meaning of the justification and impetus to act in a directed way. A civilizational project is ultimately founded on individuals believing in a united vision for their society and their place in history, and putting in the work to realize that vision. Once the musawwighāt are lost, individuals begin in their loss of purpose to lose faith in the entire civilizational project and abandon it in various ways.
The recent killing of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sparked a number of protests across the entire United States, which have spread internationally in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and against structural racism and white supremacy. The callous disregard for human life demonstrated by the police officer in the video to Floyd’s life forced many, including those who are naturally reluctant, to examine inherently oppressive towards others aspects of their lives that they took for granted.
In a way, these protests are an expression of an observation Bennabi noted in his 1961 lecture. Namely, the Western paradigm of civilization, which is founded on exceptionalism afforded to philosophies exported from a post-God European context that seeks to subdue and subjugate everything, including human beings, for the benefit of those in power, is being revolted against not only by the oppressed but also increasingly by the progeny of those having set up those systems of oppression:
Here we are in the Twentieth Century facing another tragedy – the tragedy of the Western society that in its turn is passing through a crisis of lethargy because it lost its traditional justifications/directives. The justifications/directives gave the European personality in the Nineteenth Century its highest agitation, when Europe believed in scientific progress, civilization, and colonization as a civilizational message. These justifications/directives used to mobilize and steer all social energies – the hand, the heart, and the intellect – in Europe, and united its ranks in the world. That was when the European saw scientific progress as an advantage that his intellect was attributed with, civilization as part of his nature, and colonization as an extension of his civilization outside the borders of Europe.
These things, and at least the first two of them [i.e. scientific progress and civilization], used to establish unity inside European borders and admiration outside of them.
When the Wold War I came, Europe began to lose its confidence in its justifications/directives, and these justifications/directives began to lose their sanctity because scientific progress was no longer a given thing, a matter above discussion. Rather, it became insufficient as a justification/directive that establishes unity inside and admiration outside.
Then World War II came and completely destroyed the moral unity in Europe and the sanctity of its justifications and directives. The deepest of its effects in the state of the European psyche was that colonization not only lost its value as a justification/directive from the moral side particular to some of the elite European consciences, it also lost its practical value. The young European has lost the ability to look at a map of the earth as he used to look at it in the Nineteenth Century, when he used to look at every blank space on the map as part of the unknowns of the land awaiting his discovery, i.e. as one of the lands prepared for the expansion of his personality in this universe.
The European today sees these blank coloured lands, with their people revolting against his power, with disdain towards his civilization.
وها نحن أولاء في القرن العشرين أمام مأساة أخرى، مأساة المجتمع الغربي، الذي يمر بدوره بأزمة فتور، لأنه فقد مسوغاته التقليدية، المسوغات التي أعطت للشخصية الأوروبية في القرن التاسع عشر أقصى توترها، عندما كانت أوروبا تؤمن بالتقدم العلمي وبالحضارة وبالاستعمار رسالة حضارية، فكانت هذه المسوّغات تحرك وتوجه كل الطاقات الاجتماعية: اليد والقلب والعقل في أوروبا، وتوحد صفوفها في العالم، إذ كان الأوروبي ينظر إلى التقدم العلمي ميزة يمتاز بها عقلله، وإلى الحضارة على أنها فطرته، وإلى الاستعمار على أنه امتداد حضارته خارج حدود أوروبا
وقد كانت هذه الأشياء وعلى الأقل الشيئان الأولان منها، تحقق الإجماع في الداخل في حدود أوروبا والإعجاب في الخارج خارج حدودها
وحينما جاءت الحرب العالمية الأولى بدأت أوروبا تفقد ثقتها في مسوّغاتها، وبدأت هذه المسوّغات تفقد قداستها، لأن التقدم العلمي لم يبق شيئاً مُسلّماً به، شيئاً فوق المناقشة، بل أصبح غير كاف بوصفه مسوّغاً يحقق الإجماع في الداخل والإعجاب في الخارج
ثم أتت الحرب العالمية الثانية فحطمت نهائياً وحدة أوروبا المعنوية وقداسة مسوّغاتها، وكان من أعمق آثارها في الحالة النفسية الأوروبية، أن الاستعمار قد فقد قيمته بوصفه مسوّغاً من الناحية الأخلاقية الخاصة ببعض الضمائر الأوروبية الممتازة فحسب، بل فقد حتى قيمته الواقعية، إذ لم يصبح في استطاعة الشاب الأوروبي أن ينظر إلى خريطة الأرض كما كان ينظر لها في القرن التاسع عشر، عندما كان ينظر إلى كل بقعة بيضاء على الخريطة، على أنها من مجاهل الأرض التي تنتظر اكتشافه، أي على أنها البلاد المعدة لامتداد شخصيته في هذا الكون
فالأوروبي أصبح يرى اليوم تلك البقاع البيضاء الملونة، وأهلها ثائرون على سلطته، ساخطون على حضارته
History will tell if the current mass protests will lead to tangible change. Despite being an optimist and calling for optimism, Bennabi was skeptical of efforts that do not address the root human cause that produced the pathological structure in the first place – a turning away from God:
And we must not forget in a decisive hour such as this that the loftiest justification/directive is the one descending from the heavens in His Statement, the Supreme and Magnified (I have not created the Jinn and Mankind for anything other than to worship Me), on the condition that we understand this lofty justification/directive in its historical meaning that lit up humanity’s horizons with the light of Muslim civilization. Islam came with the justifications/directives that guarantee the highest degree possible of agitation in social energies, and the loftiest degree possible in benefit that these energies can serve.
ولا ننسى في مثل هذه الساعة الحاسمة أن أسمى المسوغات هي التي تهبط من السماء في قوله عز وجل (وما خلقت الجن والإنس إلا ليعبدون)، شريطة أن نفهم هذا المسوغ السامي السماوي بمعناه التاريخي، الذي أنار آفاق الإنسانية بنور الحضارة الإسلامية، لأن الإسلام أتى بالمسوغات الكفيلة بتحقيق أقصى ما يمكن من التوتر في الطاقات الاجتماعية، وأسمى ما يمكن من المصلحة التي تخدمها تلك الطاقات
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