During the 1930s, Malek Bennabi and Mohamed Hamouda Bensai, along with Saleh Bensai and Ali Ben Ahmed, stood out in Paris for their intellectual rigor and vision for Algeria's renewal. This distinction drew the attention of colonial authorities, leading to a series of academic and professional hardships. Hamouda Bensai faced academic interference at the Sorbonne and was fired from his manual labor job at the Hispano-Suiza factory after attending a lecture by orientalist Louis Massignon. Similarly, Malek Bennabi was denied his graduation certificate despite completing his studies and struggled to secure employment thereafter. While both attributed these obstacles to Massignon's influence, historian Sadek Sellam argues that these difficulties likely stemmed from police surveillance and security vetting processes, noting that publishers closely connected to Massignon eventually published Bennabi’s significant works.