01
Doctrinal centrality
What reference centrality organizes the elements of the civilizational project, its concepts, and its fundamental values, and what place does the religious idea occupy in this construction?
From the conditions of renaissance to examining the structure that produces meaning and action
This comparison does not begin by ranking Malek Bennabi against MANHAJ, nor by diminishing the intellectual value of Bennabi’s project. Rather, it seeks to identify the location of methodological movement in each project: what makes the civilizational phenomenon intelligible? What centrality organizes its elements? Where do the construction of meaning and action begin?
The specificity of this comparison lies in the fact that Bennabi did not merely describe manifestations of underdevelopment. He sought to trace them back to deeper conditions and relations involving man, ideas, things, time, and civilization. MANHAJ moves the question to another foundational level: examining doctrinal centrality, coordinate origin, meaning coordinates, and the conceptual domain within which these elements are organized before detailed work takes place inside it.
Three questions that precede the detailed comparison
The comparison is read through the chain: doctrinal centrality → coordinate origin → conceptual domain → meaning coordinate → cognitive act, and the project’s movement is then examined according to the laws of approach.
02
Coordinate origin and meaning coordinate
From where do the relations that give meaning to the concepts of man, culture, and civilization begin? Does meaning remain stable when a concept moves into a domain governed by different conditions?
03
Direction of inquiry and rightness
Does inquiry examine the conditions of the field and the formation of the phenomenon, or does it operate within a field that has already been constituted? What makes this path capable of producing operative knowledge?
Methodological note: considering Bennabi close to a foundational or a priori approach does not place him above other thinkers, just as a difference in starting point does not negate the value of any project. The comparison concerns the direction of movement and the location of foundation, not a ranking of thinkers.
Malek Bennabi and MANHAJ: Where Does Model-Building Begin?
Malek Bennabi
Bennabi goes beyond explaining underdevelopment through partial manifestations and connects renaissance to complex conditions in which the idea, man, things, and time interact, together with the role of the religious idea in directing the civilizational cycle. His project therefore moves from the phenomenon to its conditions and from separate elements to the relations that organize them.
Faouzi Messeoud — MANHAJ
MANHAJ moves the question to a more abstract foundational level: what are the doctrinal centrality and coordinate origin from which the domain’s coordinates are derived? How does the concept of man, culture, or civilization acquire its meaning from its position and relations within that domain?
Four Axes of Comparison — MANHAJ
01From colonizability to examining systems of formation
Malek Bennabi
Bennabi attributes a fundamental dimension of the crisis of society to colonizability, shifting the explanation from external pressure alone toward an internal disposition connected with the structure of man and society and their civilizational conditions.
MANHAJ
The question advances from describing colonizability to examining systems of mental formation that can produce the dependent individual and reproduce particular patterns of thought, including through education, media, language, and other linkages that shape the conceptual domain.
02Conditions of renaissance and coordinate origin: from civilizational elements to the domain’s reference
Malek Bennabi
Bennabi does not reduce renaissance to the availability of resources. He links it to the interaction of man, soil, and time, the organizing role of the religious idea, and the transition from accumulation to organized civilizational action.
MANHAJ
MANHAJ reformulates the question in terms of coordinate origin and coordinates: from what centrality are the concepts of renaissance and civilization derived? What relations give each element its meaning and function? The stability of a term therefore does not guarantee the stability of its meaning when the domain and origin change.
03The religious idea and doctrinal centrality: from civilizational driver to the origin from which it is derived
Malek Bennabi
The religious idea occupies a central position in Bennabi’s interpretation of the civilizational cycle: it is a unifying element that directs the energy of society and gives the relations among man, things, and ideas a direction that goes beyond mere material accumulation.
MANHAJ
MANHAJ approaches doctrine as a doctrinal centrality from which the conceptual domain is derived. Its function is not merely to drive action, but to help determine the reference from which concepts, values, meanings, and functions are derived within the system.
04The centrality of culture and system: from organizing the world of ideas to modeling relations
Malek Bennabi
Bennabi views culture as an organizing element of life and connects civilizational construction to the world of ideas, persons, and things, and to the relations that transform these elements into productive action.
MANHAJ
MANHAJ turns this concern with relations into a systemic formulation: nodes, immaterial linkages, and the conceptual domain are studied as a structure that can be represented and analyzed, while identifying the centrality that determines the direction and meanings of these relations.
From the critique of accumulation to the question of derivation
Malek Bennabi
Bennabi distinguishes the accumulation of things from effective civilizational construction: the problem is not the quantity of elements a society possesses, but its capacity to organize them within a productive civilizational cycle.
MANHAJ
MANHAJ adds the question of deriving knowledge from the domain that grounds it: the validity of information or a concept in itself is insufficient if its position, coordinate, and relation to the origin are not determined. The question therefore becomes: is knowledge derived within a defined system, and are the conditions of its derivation consistent with the reference on which that system rests?
Conclusion: proximity in direction and difference in level of approach
The comparison shows that the distance between Bennabi and MANHAJ is not a simple distance of rupture. Bennabi himself moved beyond a fragmented reading of reality, connected the civilizational phenomenon to its conditions and relations, and viewed the religious idea, culture, and the world of ideas, persons, and things within an interconnected structure. In a MANHAJ reading, this brings him closer to the movement that searches for the conditions and structure of the phenomenon than to projects that merely operate within a ready-made epistemic field.
MANHAJ, however, pushes the question to another level of abstraction: it does not merely identify the elements of the system and their relations; it asks about the doctrinal centrality and coordinate origin that determine the coordinates of these relations and meanings. Inquiry thus moves from the conditions for the emergence of civilization to the conditions for founding the domain in which civilization is understood and from which concepts and actions are derived.
The relation between the two projects can therefore be read as proximity in the centrality of approach, with a difference in the level of foundation and modeling, rather than as a simple transition from an “old” project to one that “surpasses” it.
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Messeoud, F. (2026). Malek Bennabi and the Intellectual Modeling Methodology (MANHAJ): Methodological Comparison. MyPortail. https://www.myportail.com/en/compare_bennabi_faouzi_messeoud_dynamics_en.php
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