Malik Bennabi Summary

This book is written by Malik Bennabi in 1970. The idea of this book had been conceived somewhere in late 1960 or early 1961. The writing of this book was delayed by a whole decade. However, we have reason to be thankful. In that period, the author must have gained better insights about the subjects of this book. If he had written it earlier, we would no doubt have had something different. Maybe it is not good as the latter.
This book is an essential summary of author’s philosophical and sociological thought. On the surface, this book is an analysis of and holistic critique of the intellectual and political situation of the Muslim’s world during his time. The views and conclusions he made are fresh and relevant to the present situation in

Man is endowed with a universal or comprehensive vision that marks human singularity and distinctiveness from other hinds of animals. This characteristic vision of mankind is what makes man look beyond his immediate physical presence to discover his own self and the vast horizon of the universe the sublimity of existence and embrace the transcendental value of things. According to author, it is man universal vision that allows human beings to transcend their worldly life and their mere biological and material nature and act in accordance with the demands of a metaphysical ideal or at least seek a certain future goal. Therefore, the ideational world or realm of ideas is the manifestation of humanity’s universal

As he sees it, those efforts have generally been doomed to futility and failure owing to the fact that they have been carried out in the context of what he considers an historical treason whereby the leading elites have betrayed the inherited ideals and values of Islam and failed to subject their cultural borrowings from Western civilization to necessary judgment, assimilation, absorption and rejection as to make them consonant with those ideals and values. As a result, Muslim society over the last two centuries or so has been experiencing what author claims as nemesis or revenge of both its archetypes and cultural borrowings in which respect dead and deadly ideas have dominated its cultural universe. This aspect of author’s ideas is indeed of special importance and suggests the possibility of developing more authentic and viable thought categories and analytic frameworks in the Muslim context. By dead ideas he refers to the notion, thought schemes and institutions to address the challenges of their respective time and places, but they have lost their relevance to the present situation simply because the context which they addressed and the issues they were meant to resolve have changed. As for deadly ideas, they refer to whatever cultural borrowings which