Intaj al-Mustashriqin wa Atharuhu fi al-Fikr al-Islami al-Hadith
- Author died
- 1393 AH
- Editions
- Dar al-Irshad lil-Tiba'ah wal-Nashr wal-Tawzi'
Intaj al-Mustashriqin wa Atharuhu fi al-Fikr al-Islami al-Hadith (The Output of Orientalists and Its Impact on Modern Islamic Thought) is an essay by the Algerian thinker Malik Bennabi (1323–1393 AH / 1905–1973 CE) analyzing Western scholarship on Islam and examining its socio-psychological effects on the modern Muslim intellect.
Publication and Overview
The work was published in Beirut by Dar al-Irshad in 1388 AH / 1969 CE as part of the series Mafahim Islamiyyah (Islamic Concepts), and was also incorporated into Bennabi's collection al-Qadaya al-Kubra (Major Issues). Bennabi defines Orientalists as Western authors who write about Islamic thought and civilization. He classifies their output along two axes: chronological—distinguishing between medieval figures such as Gerbert of Aurillac and Thomas Aquinas, and modern scholars like Carra de Vaux and Ignaz Goldziher—and attitudinal, separating those who praise Islamic civilization from those who denigrate it.
Praise, Detraction, and the Intellectual Struggle
Bennabi argues that modern hostile Orientalism (represented by figures such as Henri Lammens and D. S. Margoliouth) had a limited negative impact because it provoked an instinctive cultural defense mechanism among Muslims, as seen in the sharp response led by Mustafa Sadiq al-Rafi'i against Taha Hussein's Fi al-Shi'r al-Jahili (On Pre-Islamic Poetry). In contrast, laudatory Orientalism—exemplified by scholars such as Joseph Toussaint Reinaud, Reinhart Dozy, Louis-Amélie Sédillot, Miguel Asín Palacios, and Gustave Le Bon—posed a subtler danger. While it offered Muslims a temporary psychological boost against the inferiority complex caused by Western material supremacy, it operated like an anesthetic, encouraging passive romanticization of past glories rather than constructive reform for the present.
Bennabi situates this dynamic within his concept of the "intellectual struggle" (al-sira' al-fikri), arguing that colonial institutions exploit praise of the Islamic past and foreign ideologies (such as artificial Marxism, existentialism, Ba'thism, or regionalist trends) to divert Muslims from confronting their fundamental challenge: the crisis of civilization and the generation of living ideas. To illustrate this, he recounts an incident at an Algerian workers' conference in Paris, where the distribution of his own booklet on contemporary issues was overshadowed when organizers invited a German author to present her laudatory book Allahs Sonne über dem Abendland (God's Sun Shines Over the West), shifting the audience's focus from present realities back to past glories.
Islam, Science, and Mental Climate
Addressing the relationship between Islam and scientific inquiry, Bennabi rejects both the reductionist claim that Arabs merely transmitted Greek learning and the apologetic trend that seeks modern scientific inventions directly in scriptural verses, criticizing works like Tantawi Jawhari's Quranic commentary for accumulating data rather than fostering dynamic thought. He posits that the Quran’s true contribution was creating a new "mental climate" that liberated the human intellect from the stage of material things (ashya') and the veneration of personalities (ashkhas) to the mature stage of autonomous ideas (afkar).
He maintains that major breakthroughs such as algebra and the decimal system were products of this Quranic environment, which fostered objective inquiry and tolerance of intellectual dissent. Bennabi concludes that Muslim societies cannot secure genuine political or economic independence without first attaining intellectual independence and regaining their capacity to produce original thought.
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