Talk:Sayyed Qutb

"He further elaborated upon these view in his commentary on the shura chapter of the Qur'an (sura 42), where he subjected the text to a rigorous analysis and established that shura embodies the duty of the ruler to consult with at least some of the ruled (usually the elite), within the general context of God-made laws that the ruler must execute. No reference is made, significantly enough, to election of the ruler by the ruled. This set of principles, claimed Qutb, is not related to any particular form of government." (Radical Islam : Medieval Theology and Modern Politics, 1985 by Emmanuel Sivan, p.73)

"Democracy in the West has become infertile to such an extent that it is borrowing from the systems of the Eastern bloc, especially in the economic system, under the name of socialism."

"Islam looked at [non-Muslims] from a height, as this is its true position, ... [Islam] did not propose similarities with their system or manners to please them, as some do today when they present Islam to the people under the names of 'Islamic Democracy' or 'Islamic Socialism', or sometimes by saying that the current economic or political or legal systems in the world need not be changed except a little to be acceptable Islamically. The purpose of all this rationalization is to appease people's desires!"

Elmer Swensen 28.4.2006 gemsofislamism.tripod.com

Qutb on Racism

The article states:

"What he saw in the USA of RACISM, materialism, and loose sexual conduct is believed by some to have been the impetus for his rejection of western values and his move towards radicalism upon returning to Egypt. Resigning from the civil service he became perhaps the most persuasive publicist of the Muslim Brotherhood. The school of thought he inspired has become known as Qutbism. (capitalization added)

But Qutb's attitude towards Africans was flatout racist in modern terms:

Jazz is his [i.e. the American's] preferred music, and it is created by Negroes to satisfy their love of noise and to whet their sexual desires ...

When Islam entered the central part of Africa, it clothed naked human beings, socialized them, brought them out of the deep recesses of isolation, and taught them the joy of work for exploring (sic) material resources. [p.105 of Milestones]

Zanj slaves used to drain the salt flats of southern Iraq, and the blacks employed in the salt mines of the Sahara and the gold mines of Nubia. These were herded in large settlements and worked in gangs. Large landowners, or crown lands, often employed thousands of such slaves. While domestic and commercial slaves were relatively well-off, these lived and died in wretchedness. Of the Saharan salt mines it is said that no slave lived there for more than five years ... [italics added) (source: Lewis, Bernard, Race and Slavery in the Middle East : an Historical Enquiry, Oxford University Press, 1990, p.14]

`It's fair to say most Muslims think slavery was acceptable at that time, but no longer. For Qutb, though, the education of Africans in "the joy of work" by early Muslim slave masters is an example of why the Muslim community should be "restored to its original form"! (quotes from p.9 of Milestones)gemsofislamism.tripod.com QUTB AND SHARI'AH LAW, THE ISLAMIC VANGUARD, SLAVERY

Let's Be Careful

The most active and knowlegeable editors and writers of many subjects (including editors and writers of the wikipedia entry on Qutb) are naturally going to be supporters of the subject, but that doesn't mean their claims are accurate.

Ebudswenson 13:22, 28 April 2006 (PDT) gemsofislamism.tripod.com

Some Proposed Revisions

(I will wait two weeks for comments, discussion, debate, etc. on these revisions.)

Current article:

What he saw in the USA of racism, materialism, and loose sexual conduct is believed by some to have been the impetus for his rejection of western values and his move towards radicalism upon returning to Egypt. Resigning from the civil service he became perhaps the most persuasive publicist of the Muslim Brotherhood. The school of thought he inspired has become known as Qutbism.

Problem:

We know Qutb detested the U.S. but can't assume Qutb's perceptions were accurate or without hypocracy. We know that he himself held strongly racist opinions (see above) on Africans, and that he was digusted by restictions on divorce in America ("cumbersome laws of marriage and divorce, which are contrary to the demands of practical life" [Milestones, p.139])

Proposed Revision:

Qutb detested the USA what he saw as its racism, materialism and loose sexual conduct. His stay there is believed by many to have been the impetus for his rejection of western values and his move towards radicalism upon returning to Egypt. Resigning from the civil service he became perhaps the most persuasive publicist of the Muslim Brotherhood. The school of thought he inspired has become known as Qutbism.

Current article:

According to Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, "In a century in which some of the most important writing came out of prisons, Qutb, for better or for worse, is the Islamic world's answer to Solzhenitsyn, Sartre, and Havel, and he easily ranks with all of them in influence. It was Sayyid Qutb who fused together the core elements of modern Islamism.... Qutb concluded that the unity of God and His sovereignty meant that human rule – government legislates its own behavior – is illegitimate. Muslims must answer to God alone." [Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, The Age of Sacred Terror: Radical Islam's War Against America (New York: Random House, 2002) p. 62] ISBN 0812969847. [That human rule is illegitimate] is central to most modern Islamists, in their assertion that all forms of governance over the muslims is illegitimate except the Islamic state Khilafah.

Problems:

Equally important to the idea of divine, not popular, sovereignty under Islamic government, are other Islamist concepts: that the west and jahiliyyah wants to destroy Islam, that Islam must be purified of any non-Islamic influences, etc.

Sunni Islamists want to see a Khilahaf restored, but the most famous and successful Islamic state, the Islamic Republic of Iran is Shi'a and it's founders

• a) do not belief the original Khilafah (with the exception of ali ibn abi Talib) were correct models for Islamic government
• b) do want rule by "guardianship of the jurist" or velyat-e faqih, not Khilafah. What all islamists agree upon is the need for Shari'ah law, and every Islamist movement with any political impact has talked about is traditional Shari'ah law.

Proposed Revision:

(see below)

Current article:

One of Qutb's main ideas was applying the term Jahiliyya, which originally referred to humanity's state of ignorance before the revelation of Islam, to modern-day Muslim societies. In his view, turning away from Islamic law and Islamic values under the influence of European imperialism had left the Muslim world in a condition of debased ignorance, similar to that of the pre-Islamic era (or Jahiliyya).

Problem:

Qutb believed that imperialism was not to blame for the problems of the Muslim world, rather the problem was the Christian world's hatred of Islam, starting in the middle ages with the crusades and passed down through the centuries. Those who blame imperialism for Islam's problems were not just wrong but "enemies of the Believers."

Examples:

"We see an example of this today in the attempts of Christendom to try to deceive us by distorting history and saying that the Crusades were a form of imperialism. The truth of the matter is that the latter-day imperialism is but a mask for the crusading spirit, since it is not possible for it to appear in its true form, as it was possible in the Middle Ages." [Milestones p.159-160]

Putting Qutb on the side of anti-imperialism makes him easier for Western leftists to relate to and sympathize with, but seriously misstates his position, especially his hatred of anything Western. Qutb's enemy in Egypt was not British imperialism, but Arab anti-imperialism in the form of the nationalist, socialist, Soviet-allied Pres. Gamal Abdul Nasser. Qutb opposed any non-Islamic influences -- the ideas of democracy (see above), equal rights, etc. -- with the exception of a few areas of learning and technology ("chemistry, physics, biology, astronomy, medicine, industry, agriculture, administration (limited to its technical aspects), technology, military arts ..." [Milestones p.109]). gemsofislamism.tripod.com

Examples:

"The whole world is steeped in Jahiliyyah... [p.10-11] Jahiliyyah is evil and corrupt, whether it be of the ancient or modern variety." [Milestones, p.132]

"We must ... free ourselves from the clutches of jahili society, jahili concepts, jahili traditions and jahili leadership." [Milestones, p.21] The idea that Islam

"Islam cannot accept or agree to a situation which is half-Islam and half-Jahiliyyah ... The mixing and co-existence of the truth and falsehood is impossible." [Milestones, p.130] "Obedience to the Shari'ah, of God, is ... even more necessary than the establishment of the Islamic belief." (Milestones, p.89) gemsofislamism.tripod.com

Qutb hated the idea that:

"to please them [non-Muslims] as some do today when they present Islam to the people under the names of `Islamic Democracy` or `Islamic Socialism,` or sometimes by saying that the current economic or political or legal systems in the world need not be changed except a little to be acceptable Islamically." [Milestones, p.134]

Proposed Revision:

His commentary on the Quran has been extremely influential; some see him as the central theorist of twentieth-century Islamism. There is anecdotal evidence that Sayyid Qutb and Shaykh Taqi-ud-deen an-Nabhani founder of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, influenced each other. According to Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, "In a century in which some of the most important writing came out of prisons, Qutb, for better or for worse, is the Islamic world's answer to Solzhenitsyn, Sartre, and Havel, and he easily ranks with all of them in influence. It was Sayyid Qutb who fused together the core elements of modern Islamism.... " [Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, The Age of Sacred Terror: Radical Islam's War Against America (New York: Random House, 2002) p. 62] ISBN 0812969847.

Some of these key ideas were the belief that

• God, not people, had soveriegnty on earth,
• traditional Shari'ah, or "God's rule on earth," was more important to Islam than actual personal belief (Milestones p.89),
• by abandoning traditional Shari'ah law Muslims had returned to the state of Jahiliyya, or the "ignorance" of pre-Islamic/non-Islamic world; this
• Jahiliyya, now covering the whole world, was "evil and corrupt" and could not be tollerated. (Milestones, p.132) Muslims must be prepared to fight against any country where "Islamic Shari'ah is not enforced" (Milestones p.124-5)
• Western Civilization, was not only "backward," a "rubbish heap" and "filth," but engaged in a "well-thought-out scheme [to] gradually to demolish the structure of Muslim society," and possessed nothing "which will satisfy its own conscience and justify its existence" (Milestones p.139, 116, p.7),
• Jews seek to "penetrate into body politics of the whole world" and generally do evil. (Milestones p.110-111)

--Ebudswenson 14:57, 12 May 2006 (PDT)

Current article:

The conditions he experienced in prison pushed Qutb finally to the conclusion that the Egyptian state was totally illegitimate. Violence against the inmates was commonplace. Sometimes this took the form of torture, but it once climaxed in the murder of 23 Muslim Brothers and the wounding of 46 after a protest in which they refused to perform hard labor. This incident transformed Qutb’s view of the Nasser government, which he considered to be unparalleled in its cruelty. His radicalization culminated in a little book published in 1964 which was based on the ideas he had written in notes and letters during his time in prison. This is the famous Ma'alim fi-l-Tariq.

Problem:

Is there any documentation of the murder of 23 prisoners? There is nothing about it in much longer and the very pro-Qutb entry in Wikipedia. I think it is important not to imply that Qutb and especially his followers were opposed in principal to violence against political prisoners or other unarmed civlians. The Islamic terrorist groups that developed following the publishing of Milestones and Qutb's execution killed hundreds of Egyptians and dozens of foreign tourists in Egypt alone.

Proposed Revision:

The conditions he experienced in prison further radicalized Qutb and pushed him to the conclusion that the Nasser regime was totally un-Islamic and illegitimate. Brutality against inmates included torture and the alleged killing of two dozens Muslim Brothers after their refusal to perform hard labor. In 1964 he published a little book published a little book based on notes and letters written during his time in prison. This is the famous Ma'alim fi-l-Tariq, or Milestones, generally considered one of, if not the most influential Islamist tract ever written. It was an immediate best seller and is said to have been published in close to 2,000 editions.

Ebudswenson 11:39, 1 May 2006 (PDT) Ebudswenson 09:37, 8 May 2006 (PDT)

Current article:

Qutb was let out of prison at the end of 1964 at the behest of the then Prime Minister of Iraq, 'Abd al-Salam 'Arif, for only 8 months before being rearrested in August 1965. He was accused of plotting to overthrow the state and subjected to a show trial which culminated in a death sentence for him and six other members of the Muslim Brotherhood. On 29 August 1966, Sayyid Qutb was executed by hanging.

Problem:

Implies Qutb was innocent, which contradicts Qutb's implied admission to participating in an armed plot:

Prosecutor: "Don't you see that extablishing an armed secret apparatus among Muslims leads to fitna, that it is rejected and prohibited by Islam?"

Qutb: "It might lead to fitna, but those responsible for it are those who ban public organizations, and they force others to resort to secret activities." (p.26)

(from Fouad Ajami "In the Pharaoh's Shadow: Religion and Authority in Egypt" from p.25 of Islam in the Political Process. Originally from Al-Mawta yatakallamun by Jawhar (full name ?)

Proposed Revision:

Qutb was let out of prison at the end of 1964 at the behest of the then Prime Minister of Iraq, 'Abd al-Salam 'Arif. Eight months later in August 1965 he was rearrested, accused of plotting with other Brethren to assassinate the President, popular movie and music stars, and to blow up public installations. He was tried, convicted, sentenced to death. On 29 August 1966 Qutb was executed by hanging.

[footnote: His trial was considered a show trial by some. Others say Qutb admitted in his court testomony to participating in an armed plot to kill political and cultural leaders of Egypt. (Ajami, Fouad, "In the Pharaoh's Shadow: Religion and Authority in Egypt" from p.25 of Islam in the Political Process. Cambridge University Press, 1986.]