André Servier

André Servier was an historian who lived in French Algeria at the beginning of the 20th century.

Career

He was chief editor of La Dépêche de Constantine,^[1] a newspaper from the city of Constantine in northeastern Algeria.^[2] Servier studied well the customs and manners of the North African people, becoming one of the few French intellectuals who studied in depth Ibn Ishaq's Sira. His research included the Ottoman Empire and the Panislamic movement. The latter was developing at that time, along with the rise of nationalist ideals in the Magrebian areas and the Middle East.

Servier saw himself as continuing Louis Bertrand's work, but adapted to the Islamic background.^[3]

Thought

Analysing the budding nationalist movements, Servier wrote that the Egyptian Nationalist Party "aims to the re-establishment of the Islamic power and the expulsion of foreigners. It is a new form of pan-Islamism but a more dangerous form because it has realistic tendencies, aiming towards a practical goal that can be reached immediately. This movement of emancipation was born in Egypt as a reaction towards British domination. Its inspirer was Mustafa Kamil Pasha who, on October 22, 1907, proclaimed in Alexandria the program of the Egyptian Nationalist Party of which he was the chief: 'Egyptians for Egypt, Egypt for the Egyptians.' Moustapha Kamel added: 'We are despoiled and the English are the despoilers. We want our country free under the spiritual domination of the Commander of the faithful.'"

Defender of Modernity and European colonization,^[4] Servier favored reflective morality against customary morality or authority-enforced puritanism. He had strong opinions about Islam and about the intellectual superiority of European thought and its institutions. He fervently defended the philosophical thought and work of the Western world as a philosophy founded on the idea of freedom and enlightened reason for mankind.^[5] Today his works are circulated among critics of Islam.

Main works

• Le Nationalisme Musulman en Egypte, en Tunisie, en Algérie : le péril de l'avenir, Constantine, M. Boet. 1913
• L’Islam et la Psychologie du Musulman, Paris, 1923
• Le problème tunisien et la question du peuplement français, 1925

See also

• Louis Bertrand
• Religious law
• Secular ethics

References

1. La Dépêche de Constantine et de l'Est Algérien - Constantine (French)
2. El Watan, Le temps de la régression historique (French)
3. L’islam et la psychologie du musulman (1923), Introduction (French)
4. Youssef Girard Le cheikh Abd el-Hamid Ben Badis vu par Malek Bennabi (French)
5. Wikiquote

External links

• Numerous blogs reproduce chapter by chapter Servier's book L’Islam et la Psychologie du Musulman, translated into English under the title "Islam and the Psychology of the Musulman". (Note : The English version has only 16 chapters, while the French original version has 20)
• Entre Europe et Méditerranée : le dialogue culturel en question (French)
• JSTOR: French Anthropology and the Durkheimians in Colonial Indochina