Document Type : Research Article / Original Article

Authors

• Fatemeh Nazari ¹
• Majid Zamani Alavijeh ²
• Ahmad Fazeli ²

¹ University of Qom

² Ethics, Theology, University of Qom, Iran

Abstract

This article explores the civilizational thought of Malek Bennabi and demonstrates how his critique of the foundational assumptions of Western civilization lays the groundwork for Islamic civilizational renewal.
Bennabi contends that Western civilization presupposes a universal truth and views the civilization it has built as the ultimate manifestation of that truth. In contrast, he argues that truth is situated and communitarian—each ummah is endowed with a truth specific to its collective capacity, and no group may claim exclusive access to absolute truth. These communal truths are context-bound and contingent. Bennabi identifies various factors that condition and delimit truth, pointing in particular to the prevailing spirit of a people and the culture that permeates them as the primary constituents of civilizational truth.
This study adopts a comparative-analytical approach to examine Bennabi’s civilizational ethics and political thought. The research is based on library-based sources and uses thematic content analysis to extract key conceptual patterns from Bennabi’s writings.
The findings suggest that Bennabi’s civilizational framework imposes upon Muslims the responsibility to build a unique civilization aligned with their own talents and dispositions. His ethical schema leads to a form of “communitarian deontology” in which moral obligation is assigned by the ummah to the moral agent. Within this paradigm, war is valorized over peace, as every civilization must engage in unceasing struggle to preserve its identity. Moreover, Bennabi’s model necessitates the fusion of religion and politics, rendering ethics subservient to religion and undermining the normative authority of Western human rights. Each ummah, in this view, is entitled to construct a legal system consistent with its civilizational ethos.

Keywords

• Malek Bin nabi
• Islamic Civilization
• Deontological Ethics
• Contextualism
• Human Rights
• Valorization of War

Main Subjects

• Rereading and interpreting the ideas of leading Muslim thinkers