Overview

Since the publication of Samuel Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations” concern about civilization has been reintroduced into the debate on the world order. Malek Bennabi (1905-1973), prominent Algerian thinker and great Muslim intellectual, intently focused on unravelling the causes of Muslim decline and the success of Western civilization and culture. The key problem he theorized lay not in the Qur’an or Islamic faith but in Muslims themselves. The author investigates Bennabi’s approach to civilization and the fundamental principles drawn, using metatheorizing methodology. In doing so he sheds further light on perhaps one of the more intriguing elements of Bennabi’s 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, according to Bennabi, forms the all-important catalyst, is explained and its significance in terms of the reversal of Muslim decline evaluated.