Malek Bennabi

Malek Bennabi مالك بن نبي
A prominent Algerian thinker
Born	January 1, 1905 Constantine, Algeria
Died	31 October 1973(1973-10-31) (aged 67–68)
Nationality	Algerian
Other names	Seddik Bennabi
Occupation	Writer, speaker,thinker, university lecturer,theologian,
Known for	civilizational cycle, problem of culture (empricial and civilizational culture), historical movement, problem of ideas, conditions of a renaissance, globalization, economics...

Malek Bennabi (1905–1973) (Arabic: مالك بن نبي‎‎) was an Algerian writer and philosopher, who wrote about human society, particularly Muslim society with a focus on the reasons behind the fall of Muslim civilization. He is mostly known for the concept of coloniability which is the inner aptitude of some societies to be colonized (Black-African particularly). The fall of the Almohad dynasty that ruled North Africa and Muslim Spain marked a new devastating trend of undermining ideas. The lack of new ideas concurrently spurned the death of new civilizations. According to Malik Bennabi, with this, emerged what he coined civilizational bankruptcy.

Bennabi was born in Constantine, Algeria. Educated in Paris and Algiers in engineering, he later based himself in Cairo, where he spent much of his time toiling through fields of history, philosophy and sociology. In 1963, after returning to Algeria, he witnessed modern science and technological civilizations fold before his very eyes. This has spurred him to reflect on the question of culture in the early nineteenth century. His approach was simple, not parroting what had been discovered before his time, but rather, searching for what constitutes the essence of culture and the birth of civilization.

From one of his works, Les Conditions de la Renaissance (1948), he defined culture as the mode of being and becoming of a people. This includes aesthetic, ethical, pragmatic, and technical values. When these contents have been clearly defined, only then could various formulations of ideas be born. The birth of new ideas equals to a dynamic society that leads to the movement of vibrancy of a new civilization. In another book, The Question of Culture (1954), he said, the organisation of society, its life and movement, indeed, its deterioration and stagnation, all have a functional relation with the system of ideas found in that society. If that system were to change in one way or another, all other social characteristics would follow suit and adapt in the same direction. Ideas, as a whole, form an important part of the means of development in a given society. The various stages of development in such a society are indeed different forms of its intellectual developments. If one of those stages corresponds to what is called “renaissance", it will mean that society at that stage is enjoying a wonderful system of ideas; a system that can provide a suitable solution to each of the vital problems in that particular society. He added that ideas influence the life of a given society in two different ways; either they are factors of growth of social life, or on the contrary, the role of factors of contagion, thus rendering social growth rather difficult or even impossible.