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, a newspaper from the city of Constantine in northeastern Algeria.
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.

Thought

Analysing the budding nationalist movements, Servier wrote about the Egyptian Nationalist Party that it:
A defender of Modernity and European colonization, 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. Today his works are circulated among critics of Islam.

Quotes

Main works