Dr. Ali Muhammad Yassin / College of Islamic Sciences – University of Karbala
Malik bin Nabi is one of the most important and moderate Islamic thinkers, known for his realistic and balanced intellectual propositions. He was born in Constantine, Algeria, in 1905. As a young boy, he memorized the entire Quran while also learning Arabic and basic sciences and mathematics. When he entered secondary school in 1920, his ideas began to take shape, fueled by a strong desire for reform and devotion to Arab-Islamic culture, which French colonialism sought to erase and suppress in this vast Arab country.
After completing his secondary education, Malik traveled with a group of friends to France in 1925, seeking work to support his large family. However, he was unable to find a suitable job and returned to Algeria, only to return to France later to study rather than work. In 1930, he applied to the Institute of Oriental Studies in Paris but was rejected due to his political stance and opposition to French colonial rule in Algeria. He then applied to the Institute of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, where he was accepted and graduated in 1935 with a degree in engineering. This experience significantly influenced the organization of his thoughts and shaped his focus on Islamic civilization.
During his stay in Paris, Malik married a French woman who converted to Islam and changed her name to Khadijah. She devoted much of her life to supporting him and bringing joy to his life, which was filled with many disappointments and hardships. His life only found stability after he moved to Egypt in 1956 as an advisor to the Islamic Research Academy in Cairo.
It was in Egypt that his true intellectual and cultural journey began. He wrote a significant body of work, most of which focused on restoring the Islamic civilization’s role within the broader human cultural context. He argued that the Islamic civilization, as an intellectual and spiritual force, had the potential to influence and contribute meaningfully to humanity if given the opportunity, free from the plots of colonial powers and arrogant forces that sought to remove this intellectual and spiritual power from the world stage.
In Cairo, Malik wrote The Idea of Afro-Asianism, Problems of Civilization in the Islamic World, and Conditions for Renaissance, which remains one of his most important intellectual contributions. In these works, and others that followed, he addressed the civilizational crisis of the Arabs and Muslims, attempting to refute the argument that religion was the cause of their backwardness and inability to catch up with global civilization. He argued that Islam was the source of the greatest civilization in human history—the Islamic civilization—and that it had also contributed to the development of Western civilization, as acknowledged by the West itself. The Islamic civilization continues to inspire many Western thinkers and Muslim intellectuals, who call for the Muslim world to adopt Western-style development to catch up with the modern world.
Malik bin Nabi attributes the current state of decline in the Arab and Muslim world to a long period of intellectual and cultural collapse, the lack of proper knowledge-building, and the inability to restore the balance between the past grandeur of Muslims and their current state.
For Malik, Islam, as understood in the Quranic phenomenon, is a dynamic idea that can establish and develop any society that adopts it sincerely. The Quran, as the supreme book of Islam, contains not only divine revelations but also the personal qualities of the one upon whom the revelation was sent. This, according to Malik, constitutes what he calls the “Quranic phenomenon,” which is embraced by divine will and guidance to lead humanity to what is best and most righteous.
The Quran’s miraculous nature, its precision and artistry, and its profound depth are, for Malik, an invitation for ongoing study. He believes that everything in the Quran—its language, its metaphors, its teachings—raises questions that can only be answered through continual and serious reflection. For example, when he reads the verse from Surah An-Nur: “Or [they are] like darknesses within an unfathomable sea, which is covered by waves, above which are waves, above which are clouds—darknesses, some of them upon others. When one puts his hand out, he can hardly see it. And whomever Allah has not made light for, for him there is no light” (Quran 24:40), he asks: Is this image from the Arabian Sea? He answers that it could possibly be describing the Atlantic Ocean, where ships often use horns to navigate through such darkness. Thus, the image in the Quran is not from the Arabian environment, but rather speaks of a larger world that transcends the immediate surroundings of the Prophet Muhammad.
Malik reflects on this and wonders, with deep sorrow, why, with such a miraculous book, the Islamic civilization has lost its brilliance and its relevance. He identifies the reasons for this decline in the leaders of Islam, the religious authorities, and the rulers who abandoned the principles and values set by the Quran, leaving its teachings on the shelf and distorting its course. He ends his reflection with a poignant question: “Will this last forever?”
His answer, however, is filled with hope: “No, it will not last forever. The blessed group will rise to restore society in every era, lifting it from decline to prosperity and cultural glory.” He refers to this period of revival as the “Conditions for Salvation,” where, whenever society feels its existence is threatened, sparks of hope and energy will arise from within itself. These hidden, creative energies have the power to perform miracles, fueled by the strength and hope contained in the Quran, and the belief in a bright future ahead.
