Sayyid Qutb
Profile and Biography

Name:
Sayyid Qutb

Dates:
Born: October 8, 1906
Died: August 29, 1966 (executed by hanging)
Visited the United States: 1948-1950
Joined Ikhwan (The Muslim Brotherhood): 1951
Published Ma'aallim Fittareek (Milestones): 1965

While barely known in the United States, Sayyid Qutb is the
one man who could be considered the ideological grandfather
of Osma bin Laden and the other extremists who surround
him. Although Qutb started out as a literary critic, he
became radicalized on a trip to the United States.

Sayyid Qutb travelled through America between 1948 and
1950, and was shocked at the moral and spiritual degeneracy
he observed, stating that "No one is more distant than the
Americans from spirituality and piety." This is something
that would probably surprise Christian fundamentalists, who
look upon this time quite fondly.

Not even American churches escaped his angry notice, and in
his narratives he relates this incident:

Every young man took the hand of a young woman. And these
were the young men and women who had just been singing
their hymns! Red and blue lights, with only a few white
lamps, illuminated the dance floor. The room became a
confusion of feet and legs: arms twisted around hips; lips
met lips; chests pressed together.

It was partially due to such experiences that Qutb came to
reject everything about the West, including democracy and
nationalism. The United States at that time was,
politically and socially, perhaps at the height of the
West. Because it was so bad, he concluded that nothing the
West had to offer was particularly good.

Unfortunately for him, the Egyptian government at that time
was very pro-Western, and his new views brought him into
conflict with the current regime. Like so many other young
radicals, he was thrown in prison, where deprivation and
torture were the norm. It was there, horrified by the
barbarism of the camp guards, that he probably lost hope
that the current regime could be called "Muslim."

Yet he had a lot of time to think about religion and
society, allowing him to develop some of the most important
modern ideological concepts which Islamic extremists still
use. Because of this, Qutb wrote the widely influential
book Malim if al-Tariq, "Signposts on the Road" (often
simply called "Signposts") in which he made his case that
social systems were either Nizam Islami (truly Islamic) or
Nizam Jahi (pre-Islamic ignorance and barbarism).

This colored the world in stark terms of black or white;
still, his immediate focus was Egypt, not the world at
large, so the fact that the Egyptian government seemed to
be squarely on the Nizam Jahi side determined the direction
of his efforts for the remainder of his life. Qutb's role
was important, because there had been an ideological vacuum
in the Muslim Brotherhood since its al-Banna had been
assassinated in 1949, and in 1952, Qutb was elected to the
leadership council of the Brotherhood.

One of the most important things he wrote about was his
explanation of how a Muslim might justly assassiate a
ruler. For a long time, killing political rulers was
expressly forbidden in Islam - even an unjust ruler was
regarded as better than the anarchy of no ruler. Instead,
the religious leaders of the ulama (Islamic scholars) were
expected to keep the rulers in line.

But to Qutb, that obviously wasn't happening, and he found
a way around it. According to him, the ruler of a Muslim
nation who doesn't implement Islamic law is not really a
Muslim. That being the case, they aren't really a Muslim
ruler any more, but rather an infidel. This means that they
can be killed with impunity:

Thus, a society whose legislation does not rest on divine
law (shari'at allah) is not Muslim, however ardently its
individuals may proclaim themselves Muslim, even if they
pray, fast, and make the pilgrimage.

But Qutb did not simply make this up on his own. Like
Maududi, he relied on the writings of Ibn Taymiya
(1268-1328), who argued the same thing during a time when
the Mongols were attacking Islam, and many Muslims were
forced to live under Mongol rulers. His equation of
Taymiyya's political struggles with his own problems with
the Nasser regime was risky because, in Islamic tradition,
any Muslim who falsely accuses another of being an infidel
could end up in hell.

Another important conerstone of his work was his use of the
Islamic concept of jahiliyya. This term is used in Islam to
characterize the days before Muhammad's revelation, and
before him it primarily just meant "ignorance" (of Islam).
But after him, it also acquired more explicitily the
concept of "barbarism" (due to a lack of Islamic
principles):

...jahiliyya... takes the form of claiming the right to
create values, to legislate rules of collective behavior,
and to choose any way of life that rests with me, without
regard to what God has prescribed.

For fundamentalists, one of the primarily religious values
is the sovereignty of God: God created everything and has
absolute rights to it all. But secular society violates
that sovereignty by creating new rules which override the
wishes of God. According to Qutb, any non-Muslim society
qualifies as jahiliyya because Allah is not sovereign -
instead, men and their laws are sovereign, replacing Allah
in his rightful place.

By expanding the use of this term to include even his own
contemporary society, Qutb neatly gave an Islamic
justification to revolution and sedition. For Qutb, this
revolution was jihad, but he didn't mean it simply in a
violent manner. For him, jihad meant the entire process of
first, spiritual maturation of individuals and, later,
battle against a repressive regime:

How must the Islamic resurrection begin? A vanguard must
resolve to set it in motion in the midst of jahiliyya that
now reigns over the entire earth. That vanguard must be
able to decide when to withdraw from and when to seek
contact with the jahiliyya that surrounds it.

Qutb thus brought about a new way for modern Muslims,
dissatisfied with their condition, to look at society. He
provided an ideological framework in which they could use
principles of Islam, rather than Western categories like
capitlaism, socialism, democracy, etc., in order to fight
against an unjust government.

This framework later bore fruit when President Sadat was
assassinated in 1981. The group responsible was Jama'at
al-Jihad ("Society of Struggle"), started and run by
Muhammad Abd al-Salam Faraj, a former member of the Muslim
Brotherhood who felt that the organization had become too
passive. He wrote a short book called called "The Neglected
Obligation" (al-Farida al-Gha'ibah), which relied heavily
on Qutb's ideas.

Like Qutb, Faraj argued that acceptance of a government was
only possible and legitimate when that government fully
implemented shari'a, or Islamic law. Contemporary Egypt had
not done that, and was thus characterized as suffering from
jahiliyya. Faraj makes his case that jihad is not only the
"negelected obligation" of Muslims, but in fact one of
their most important duties.

Why? Because the lack of jihad is responsible for the
current situation of Muslims in the world. Their social,
economic and political woes are due to the fact that they
have forgotten what it means to be Muslims, and as well as
how to fight against the infidels. Words and preaching
won't be enough, because only force and violence can
destroy "idols."

A member of this group, 24-year-old artillery lieutenant
Khalid Ahmed Shawki al-Islambuli, and four other members
shot Sadat while he was reviewing a military parade. At the
time, al-Islambuli shouted "I have killed Pharoh," a
reference to the fact that they considered Sadat a
non-Muslim leader. During his trial, he said "I am guilty
of killing the unbeliever and I am proud of it."

The five men were all executed, but today, Muhammad
al-Islambuli, the brother of President Sadat's assassin,
has been living in Afghanistan and working with Osama bin
Laden. Another member of that group was Dr. Ayman
al-Zawahiri, who is today Osama bin Laden's
second-in-command. But al-Zawahiri only spent three years
in prison after he was convicted and has only become more
radical in his views.

SAYYID QUTB AND HIS INFLUENCE
Interview with Professor Ibrahim Abu-Rabi
Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi is professor of Islamic Studies and
Christian-Muslim Relations at the Duncan Black Macdonald
Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim
Relations at Hartford Seminary (Hartford, Connecticut). He
is also co-editor of The Muslim World. Among his
publications: Intellectual Origins of Islamic Resurgence in
the Modern Arab World (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1995), which is mainly devoted to an examination of
the thought of Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966).

RELIGIOSCOPE - Before we deal with specific thinkers of the
Islamic resurgence, some clarifications regarding the use
of descriptive labels. Islamism? Islamic resurgence?
Islamic fundamentalism? Islamic revival? Which labels do
you consider appropriate, which ones are not, which ones
are the most adequate to describe the whole of these
movements?

IA-R - In my book I have used the term Islamic revivalism,
not Islamic fundamentalism, or Islamic resurgence, because
if one goes back to the19th century, to the origins of
Islamic resurgence, we find it was much wider, broader than
political resurgence. As a matter of fact, many Muslims in
the 19th century did not call for the implementation of the
sharia but they wanted to revive Islamic values and Islamic
ways of life, especially those that have been challenged by
colonial presence in the Muslim world, what is often
referred to as modernity.

But it was not modernity pure and simple. It was the
imposition of Western ideas through a well-founded
political and economic system of domination on the Muslim
world. And that’s why there was a broad reaction by Muslim
institutions, Muslim states and Muslim intelligentsia to
that system of domination. For example that process of
Islamic response, at the level of the State in the Ottoman
Empire, was called tanzimat, reorganization. Tanzimat means
that modernization of Turkish-Ottoman society, which did
not stop the disintegration of the empire, because it
disintegrated after World War I. Therefore, I would use the
term Islamic revival, or Islamic resurgence.

RELIGIOSCOPE - To a lesser extent, we might describe the
spread of Islamic resurgence as a consequence of the
failure of Arab nationalism. But since Islamic resurgence
was not confined to the Arab world, what do you see as the
more general causes of the surge of Islamic resurgence. Is
it basically the encounter with modernity?

IA-R - I think one has to distinguish between three
different phases of Islamic resurgence.

1) The first one is what I would call pre-colonial, like
the Wahhabi movement in Arabia, that did not react to
foreign European ideas. It was an internal movement and
pre-colonial in this sense.

2) And then there is the second Islamic resurgence, the
colonial phase, which began roughly at the beginning of the
19th century until around the middle of the 20th century
and responded to different forms of European domination in
the Muslim world. The Muslim Brotherhood movement,
originating in Egypt, is one major example. The second
example, the Jamaat-e-Islami of Pakistan, was established
by Mawdudi in 1941-42, before the partition of India and
Pakistan. So, these are two broad, major Islamic
organizations that emerged in the context of the colonial
presence.

3) Now other Islamic movements emerged after the
post-colonial ones. Let’s say the Taliban is a
post-colonial one. The Egyptian Jihad is a post-colonial
one. So, therefore, one can distinguish, as I said, between
the pre-colonial, colonial, post-colonial phases.

RELIGIOSCOPE - Can we consider the abolition of the
Califate after the fall of the Ottoman empire as a key
event – not merely the abolition of the Califate, but some
passages of your book seem to imply clearly that the
secularizing enterprise of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was
perceived by contemporary Muslim thinkers in the Arab world
as ominous, a warning sign of things to come?

IA-R - Yes, there is no doubt that the disintegration of
the Ottoman state – officially in 1923 – has had major
consequences on Islamic revival, because when Muslim
revivalists look at the Ottoman Empire, although it was
weak and corrupt, it was a symbol of Islamic unity, not
just political unity but theological unity. But there has
been a feeling that, since 1924, that unity has
disappeared, the Muslim world has had no centre, so to
speak. And that, of course, has ushered us into the era of
the nation-states in the Muslim world, that are not
unified, but as a matter of fact there are different
conflicts between them. So, this is one major reason. You
know the response of the Muslims in India in the 1910s was
to create the Al-Khilafa movement. They collected donations
and sent them to Turkey as a means to preserve the
integrity of the Ottoman state. That was popular, both
popular and organisational in the sense that Muslims are
scared of the idea of the loss of the Khilafat. There is
one Islamic party, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, that speaks now in the
name of Khilafat, whose major intention has been to revive
the Khilafat, which I doubt will be revived although
Hiz-ut-Tahrir are pretty vocal people. They are a small
minority, but they are pretty vocal in different cities in
Europe.

RELIGIOSCOPE - In the last chapter of your book, you
describe one of the thinkers of contempory Islam as
"post-Qutbian". So actually Qutb emerges in your book in a
pivotal role Can we really say that the work of Qutb
represents a turning point in contemporary Islamic
resurgence and why?

IA-R - I think Qutb is one of the most significant thinkers
in modern and contemporary Arab Islamic resurgence
Sometimes, he is more important than Hassan al Banna, if
not often, although Hassan al Banna was the founder of the
movement. Sayyid Qutb was not. Initially Sayyid Qutb was a
secular man of letters in Egypt, before he converted fully
to Islamic ideas in the 1940s.

But Qutb had a unique personality. First he spent quite a
large number of years of his life in prison. And he wrote a
large portion of his writings, especially the exegesis of
the Quran, while he was in prison. And that is why his
writings became the ideological cornerstone of many other
revivalist movements emerging in the Arab and Muslim world
after the 1960s, after he was executed. The fact that he
was executed means that he has been made a martyr in the
eyes of all these many people. So Qutb has given that
inspiration to so many people.

Nowadays in the Arab world, there are a number of islamic
thinkers, but I think one major Islamic thinker, who is
exerting so much power on the young Arab intelligentsia, is
a Lebanese Shiite, Mohammad Husayn Fadlallah. And I have
written a whole chapter on him. Mohammed Husayn Fadlallah
seems to continue the legacy of Sayyid Qutb in so many
different ways. He does not advocate violence, but he is
very critical of Israel and the United States. And you may
have read the press report about him a few weeks ago, where
he condemned the assault on the USA. But he also condemned
the American attack in Afghanistan, because that would not
be very helpful.

RELIGIOSCOPE - In your book you mentioned an author, a man
called Nadwi, an Indian by birth, whose book was introduced
in the Arabic translation by Sayyid Qutb in 1951. This is
interesting: upon that Muslim-Arab resurgence, there were
also influences from Muslim thinkers outside the Arab
world. Were those people in India and in Egypt in touch
with each other?

IA-R - The two most famous people from South Asia who
influenced Arabs have been Nadwi and Mawdudi. These two
people have been very influential. But Nadwi, who died only
two years ago at avery old age, is somewhat different from
Mawdudi. Nadwi refused to go to Pakistan after partition,
whereas Mawdudi went. So that is one major difference Both
of them, of course have called for the implementation of
the sharia and for the revival of justice in Islamic
society. Yes, these people have had a major impact on the
young Arab intelligentsia.

RELIGIOSCOPE - Qutb could not have become what he became
without the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood was born in
Egypt, but very soon spread beyond Egypt, which indicates
that it was answering not just questions widespread among
Egyptian intellectuals, but also in the Arab world
generally. Could you briefly summarize how the Muslim
Brotherhood spread outside of Egypt already before the
Second World War?

IA-R - That is a very interesting question. Let me just say
Qutb joined the movement at the end of the 1940s. No one
exactly knows the date when he joined the movement, but my
feeling is that he did after the assassination of Hassan
al-Banna, the founder of the movement. This is a major
factor to have in mind. But the second major factor that
led perhaps to an increase in the charisma of Sayyid Qutb
is the Nasserite  revolution of 1952, because now, after
1952, we are dealing with a fundamentally different
situation than had been current in Egypt before that time.
And Qutb did not adjust himself fully. Initially the Ikhwan
assumed or thought that the young officers would take an
Islamic road, an Islamic path. But they were disappointed a
few years later, because that was not the case.

In terms of the spread of the Muslim Brotherhood movement,
I think it began in the 1940s and the 1950s. In the Arab
world, it was spread mainly by different Arab Muslim
students who had gone to Cairo to study, especially at
Al-Azhar, and who had come in contact with the different
Muslim Brothers. Egypt its a major Arab country. It’s the
major intellectual Arab country. So when you are an Arab
born in Syria, in Palestine or Morocco and you go to Egypt,
you come in touch with different intellectual currents in
Egypt. If you are a Muslim or of Islamic leaning, you would
come in touch personally with the leaders of the movement.
Then these people went back. This was very clear in terms
of the Sudan (Hassan al-Turabi) or in terms of Syria with
Yusuf al-Sibai’, the founder of the Ikhwan in Syria. He had
studied in Egypt in the 1940s. In addition we should not
forget that the Ikhwan sent an army regiment to fight
against Zionists in Palestine. So all these factors led to
the promotion of the Ikhwan’s ideas.

RELIGIOSCOPE - The key person in the early Muslim
Brotherhood was Hassan al-Banna. What was most important
with him was a system of ideas which he developed, much
more than his political activities. Could you please tell
us more about that system of ideas which Hassan al-Banna
introduced and which had not been present before him?

IA-R - If you look at his own writings, he is a very
interesting man. Richard Mitchell had written a book on
Hassan al-Banna, but I think we still need a whole book
devoted to Hassan al-Banna himself, about his own life,
education, background, ideas, and so on and so forth.

Hassan al-Banna basically was from the countryside. He had
been very much influenced by Sufi ideas. Then later on,
when he went to Ismailia and Cairo, he began to be
influenced by the ideas of such people as Muhammad Abduh,
Jamal al-Din Al-Afghani, Rashid Rida. So in the 1930s he
was trying to create a synthesis of all these ideas in his
own system. So he was saying, “We are a Sufi brotherhood,
but we are a disciplined organisation as well. We are an
intellectual movement that teaches to reform Islam.”
Although he did not say that clearly, he had assumed that
all intellectual leaders of Islamic reform in the 19th
century, especially Abduh, Afghani and Rida, had failed to
create mass-oriented movements. They were speaking
wonderful ideas but they did not put these ideas to a test.
His function was to embody all of these ideas in a
mass-oriented movement that would create a major power in
Egyptian society. And this is one reason he was murdered by
the Egyptian secret police, because the Egyptian state had
become aware of the kind of threat he was posing to the
monarchy in Egypt in the late 1940s.

RELIGIOSCOPE - You mentioned in the career of Hassan
al-Banna the importance of Sufism for him. Today, however,
Islamic revivalist groups are usually quite opposed to
Sufism. Is that a kind of perception from outside?

IA-R - Many of them are, although this was not the case in
the career of Hassan al-Banna. But someone like Muhammad
Abduh was anti-Sufi in his pronouncements. But most of the
leaders of Islamic resurgence have come from urban centres,
from the cities where there is no association with Sufi
ideas, and they have looked down on Sufi ideas as a
perversion of Islamic ideas.

RELIGIOSCOPE - In the work of Hassan al-Banna as well as
the works of later Muslim modern thinkers, there is a
criticism not just of colonialism, of Western secularism,
but apparently of Christianity too, which is understandable
due to the fact that missionary enterprises were quite
often mingled with colonial enterprises. You mentioned that
Hassan al-Banna also observed that the Egyptian Coptic
community was an indigenous community, not compromised with
Western Christian imperialism. Could you please elaborate
and tell us how later Islamist thinkers as well dealt with
the reality of Eastern Christianity?

IA-R - Hassan al-Banna was very critical of Westernized
ideas, especially at the level of education and philosophy.
He was not open to accept these ideas, because of their
corrupting presence. But he was not critical of the Coptic
community. On the contrary, he called for dialogue. But
that was normal in the Egyptian political environment in
the 1930s and the 1940s. We must not forget the role of the
Wafd party and Sa’d Zaghloul in cementing relations between
Copts and Muslims in the face of the British.

By and large, there has to be a research in terms of the
position of the different Islamic movements throughout the
Arab world on the Christian community in the Middle East.
The Muslim Brotherhood has said that Christians are our
brothers. We must dialogue with them. This is very clear.
And most conspicuous in the ideas and practice of Sheikh
Mohammed Husayn Fadlallah in Lebanon: he always has
meetings with the bishops and different religious leaders
in Lebanon. He has said several times that "it is not our
intention to create an Iislamic state, because we live in
Lebanon, where we have a large Christian community". It is
not fair to create an Islamic state or to implement the
sharia. "But we have to create a pluralistic Lebanese
state, where religions are respected as religions." So that
is a new discourse that has to be analyzed further – and it
has not been analyzed in a major way, as of yet.

RELIGIOSCOPE - Your book explains in detail how Qutb
developed a radical Islamic agenda even before becoming a
member of the Brotherhood. Of course, you described his
intellectual route in great detail in your book, but could
you summarize in a few words the main phases of Qutb’s
biography?

IA-R - Basically, in the 1930s Qutb, a man of letters, was
very much influenced by two major personalities, Taha
Hussain  and Al-Aqqad . Although they wrote about Islamic
themes, they had not come from the ranks of Islamic reform
so to speak. In the 1940s or so, Sayyid Qutb began to be
more and more aware of the importance of the Quran in the
Islamic life. So he began to take the Quran as the only
document, only criteria of analysis and truth. He said in
his exegesis “I spent thirty or forty years of my life,
wasting my life, studying European philosophy before I
turned back to the Quran and understood the secrets of the
Quran.” So there was a major shift in his career, his
intellectual life, from a secular man of letters to a
religious person.

Then at the end of the 1940s, there was another shift. He
began to apply his own Islamic theology of the Quran to
social issues in Egyptian society. But somebody else,
Sheikh Mohammad al-Ghazali, who in 1945 wrote a major book
on Islam and economic justice that influenced the thought
of Sayyid Qutb, had begun this. And that thought was very
clear in his book, Social Justice in Islam.

Then there was another shift, especially after 1952, when
the Egyptian revolution took place. What position should we
take as Muslim Brothers vis-à-vis the Egyptian revolution?
It was hoped that the young Egyptian officers would accept
to implement Islam, but that was not the case. And that led
to the imprisonment of Sayyid Qutb and later on his
execution in 1966.

RELIGIOSCOPE - In the Muslim Brotherhood, what was his
organizational position?

IA-R - He was in charge of different publications by the
Ikhwan and he was seen to be the top ideologue of the
Ikhwan.

RELIGIOSCOPE - Qutb advocated what could be described as a
third way, neither communism nor capitalism. If we
understand him correctly, what shocked him first in both
instances were the basic materialistic premises in both
capitalism and communism. Those are materialistic
worldviews.

IA-R - Of course, he talks about this, but he is not the
only one who talks about it in modern Islamic thought. He
talks about the Islamic system and its characteristics. You
feel in speaking about the Islamic system, he was speaking
about an ideal Islamic system that was not practiced
anywhere in the world at least at that time. But that was
his hope that some day the Muslims would be able to
implement the ideal Islamic system that would achieve a
balance between materialism and spirituality, between this
life and the after-life.

RELIGIOSCOPE - Qutb was not only aware of the West from
reading books, but he also had a direct experience of the
West. He studied in America in 1949 and 50. Do we know more
about his experiences during this time?

IA-R - He wrote a book about his life in America, that I
was not able to find, because it became banned in Egypt.
But somebody wrote a dissertation with long quotations from
that book He came to study English in Maryland. He was in
his forties when he came here, a mature man, a well-known
man of letters in the Egyptian society.

We still do not know about his reaction to American
society. I remember one day he went to a church and he
discovered that people in church played music and even
conducted dances. This was very much disliked by him. He
began to feel bad for Christianity, that Christianity has
become material, but above all Christianity has become
highly secularised and corrupted by these elements.

RELIGIOSCOPE - Qutb was also an avid reader as you
observed. It seems however that you think the influence of
other authors was not as strong as a number of scholars
claim. You consider that the main influences upon him were
his reading of the Quran and the historic situation in
Egypt.

IA-R - Yes. After the 1940s. But before that he had been
influenced by a great number of authors. Even after the
1940s, this French medical doctor, Alexis Carrel,
influenced him.

RELIGIOSCOPE - In the eyes of Qutb, the foundation of the
State must be identical to that of religion, and of course
this would be to most Western secularists anathema. Is
there a way to explain to Western secularists that Islamic
movements, founded upon such ideas, however should be
entitled to free space in the political arena of Muslim
countries? How do Muslim Islamic thinkers deal today with
that issue, to reconcile the pluralist political system
with the Islamic foundations of the state?

IA-R - Unfortunately in some Arab and Muslim countries, the
Islamic movement has not been allowed to function in a
democratic atmosphere, because there is simply a lack of
that democratic atmosphere. One prime example is Algeria.
Another is Turkey. This has led to a collision, especially
in the Algerian case, between the Islamist forces and the
government or the army. We see more and more the space of
civil society is disappearing from many Muslim countries,
whereby some of these people resort to violence as their
only option. I think we should work on restoring civil
liberties and democratic space in the Arab and Muslim
world. I think the Islamic movements have to be allowed to
function normally in those societies. If the people want to
elect an Islamic movement, why not? Just put them in power.
If they fail, then the people will decide. They would make
up their minds. Very often they would fail, because many of
them do not have the experience of leading a sophisticated
state or a big country. But they must be allowed to be part
of the political process.

RELIGIOSCOPE - A key word in Qutb’s works is aqidah. Would
you please explain the meaning of the word aqidah?

IA-R - You know aqidah is not a new term in Islam. It
simply means Islamic doctrine, Islamic ideas, belief in
God. Qutb gave it a new, dynamic character. Aqidah is that
ideological spiritual bond that cements the young Muslim
forces in a highly changing society. Aqidah would give you
stability, fixity, form as well as power to withstand all
the different changes around you. And that is why I say
Qutb was speaking about this marriage, this meshing between
aqidah and youngster, pioneers who would be the hope in
building a new Islamic society. He talks a lot about the
characteristics of the aqidah, but he goes back to the
early Islam, especially to the Medina phase of Islam, when
Muslims were still young in their religion but they were
able to withstand different changes in Arabic society at
that time.

RELIGIOSCOPE - Another key concept in Qutb’s work is the
concept of jahiliyya. Could you please explain its
traditional meaning and the meaning Qutb gives to it?

IA-R - Jahiliyya is a term used by the Quran for describing
the pre-Islamic conditions in Arabia. Roughly, it means
ignorance or the phase of ignorance. Islam was supposed to
supplant all the different traditions, practices, and ideas
of jahiliyya with a new Islamic system that is far
different from jahiliyya. Qutb, especially when he was in
prison, used the term jahiliyya to refer to the Muslim
world in the 20th century, that refused to implement the
sharia or establish an Islamic state. That was full of
jahiliyya according to him. But it seems to me that he did
that under extreme circumstances, and this is the part the
Jihad people in prison picked that up in the 1960s and the
1970s, and that became a dominant part of the Islamist
discourse especially, in Egypt in the 1970s, 1980s. Many of
these people who had that kind of discourse went to
Afghanistan to fight against the Soviets, and now they are
a part of the Qaeda. Somebody like Qutb must have had a
major impact on somebody like Bin Laden, for example, or
Ayman al-Zawahri, or others.



RELIGIOSCOPE - Continuing on that line, we see the rather
pessimistic conclusions of Qutb about the current state of
the Muslim world. Do you see in Qutb’s works some
millenarian dimensions, the idea of endtimes? It seems so
pessimistic it could easily lead to an apocalyptic
thinking.

IA-R - No, I could not see that in his thought. He was
still hoping a new Muslim generation would arise and
rebuild the Islamic world and Islamic state. Until the end
of his life, he believed in the power of the young Muslim
pioneers and intelligentsia, a power that would be cemented
by aqidah or doctrine in the revival of Islam. He did still
believe in that all the way to the end.



RELIGIOSCOPE - You have described Qutb’s influence upon
radical Islam already, but can we elaborate briefly about
his influence today for instance even upon Western Muslims?
I see his books published in Western countries. How do you
think that Qutb’s thinking can apply to conditions of
Muslims living in the West?

IA-R - Let me just say Qutb has been translated, not too
widely into English but into different Islamic languages.
For example his major book, The Battle between Islam and
Capitalism, has not been translated into English. The young
Muslims who are born in the Western environment are very
much impressed by Sayyid Qutb. Students in my classes find
him to be very relevant in their Western environment. So he
must still exert a major impact on the minds of the young
Muslims in Europe as well as the States.



RELIGIOSCOPE - Regarding his influence outside the Muslim
Arab world, what can we say about it?

IA-R - He is very influential in South Asia and South East
Asia, but mostly in Indonesia where there is a large Muslim
party by the name of Al-Ikhwan, who have, I heard, two
million followers, and Qutb is their major ideologue still.



RELIGIOSCOPE - And the name Al-Ikhwan doesn’t relate them
to the Muslim Brotherhood?

IA-R - It’s an offshoot of the Egyptian Ikhwan.

RELIGIOSCOPE - And within the Brotherhood today, how far is
Qutb being read, or is he seen by some people with some
distance?

IA-R - I would like to equate Qutb to Malcolm X and Hassan
al-Banna to Elijah Muhammad. Many people speak about the
tradition of Elijah Muhammad while reading Malcolm X or
listening to his tapes, in the same vein that many people
speak of tradition of Hassan al-Banna while listening to
the ideas of Sayyid Qutb.

The interview with Prof. Abu-Rabi took place in Hartford on
8 November 2001. He was interviewed by Jean-François Mayer.
The tape recording was transcribed by Nancy Grivel-Burke.










___________________________________________________________
How much mail storage do you get for free?  Yahoo! Mail
gives you 6MB! Get Yahoo! Mail http://uk.mail.yahoo.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To Search in the Gambia-L archives, go to: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/CGI/wa.exe?S1=gambia-l
To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to:
[log in to unmask]

To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface
at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~