The Thought of Sayyid Qutb: Difficult to Avoid, but Discreetly Controversial

CHAPTER FIVE THE THOUGHT OF SAYYID QUTB: DIFFICULT TO AVOID, BUT DISCREETLY CONTROVERSIAL Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966) was a writer who became a prolifi c ideologue late in life.1 Our primary focus in the present writing is his infl uence, as this has been expressed in our interviews, and indicated in our research. Th us the personality we will describe is less complex than Qutb really was, and we shall say nothing about his relationship with Gamal Abd Al- Nasser. Th is relationship, though, was responsible for trouble in Sayyid Qutb’s life. Th e two men came to know each other when the mb sup- ported Nasser, at the time when he became President of Egypt. Sayyid Qutb felt betrayed when subsequently the movement was excluded from the councils of the powerful, aft er the revolution of 1952, and this feel- ing was involved in his radicalization and in the way events would later develop. Over and above his status as a martyr, connected with the fact that he was cruelly persecuted and in the end summarily hanged for his ideas alone, his thought is oft en mentioned, above all in private, in relation to his exegesis of the Koran. In fact, aft er his 1949 work Al-ʿadāla al- ijtimāʿiyya fī al-Islām (Social justice and Islam), around 1953–54, he was active in the opposition to Nasser’s despotic power and the abuses to which it led. Under Qutb’s infl uence the thinking of the mb became radi- calized [Carré, 1984:135], at a time when the movement was under the direction of the former judge, Hasan Al-Hudaybī, whose actual infl u- ence within the movement had weakened. Sayyid Qutb is considered by many partisans and even by sympathiz- ers to be an important point of reference for the movement. Still, his name is rarely invoked by those presenting papers at conferences, and many in a Muslim audience do not necessarily have the background to determine the origin or the proximity of certain thoughts discussed 1 On the evolution of the work of Sayyid Qutb as an author, see especially the analy- sis provided by Abu-Rabiʾ, 1996. He was also the author of literary criticism, poetry, an autobiographical work and many works concerning politics, religion and doctrine (on social justice, relations between civilizations, especially La bataille entre l’islam et le capitalisme, La paix mondiale et l’islam, etc.). the thought of sayyid qutb 105 today, that fi nally bear his stamp. Th is silence is evidence of a certain reluctance, a certain desire to distance oneself from a past that is very controversial outside mb circles. In private interviews we have observed that the consensus of mb partisans is sometimes denied. Some of them, not many, have even expressed a certain dislike for the fi gure of Qutb, even a rejection. 1. A specifi c continuity relative to Hassan Al-Bannā . In his thesis on the subject of Muslim reformism, Tariq Ramadan sums up adequately the question of the relationship between the two leading fi gures of the movement. According to him, Sayyid Qutb, in terms of his thought taken as a whole, stands in continuity with Hassan Al-Bannā; he ‘remained faithful to the global conception of the mb as it was formu- lated by the founder’ [Ramadan, 2002:428].2 However, over and above this perspective on an increased Islamization of the law and the much- desired consolidation of an avant-garde formed by a minority of sincere Muslims, Sayyid Qutb does separate himself from the thought of Has- san Al-Bannā especially when he analyzes the causes of social dysfunc- tion and set priorities for action. Qutb thought that the failure of the regime in power to respect divine prescriptions was the main problem, while Hassan Al-Bannā thought that the problem of understanding the faith was primary, and responsible for causing negligence in the man- agement of human aff airs [Ramadan, 2002:422]. Th us the main focus in this instance is religious education, not the abuse of power, although the latter problem was never absent from the thoughts and concerns of Hassan Al-Bannā. Further, Sayyid Qutb overvalued certain concepts and created new interpretations for others. In fact, in his major work, Fī Zilāl al-Qurʾān— In the shadow of the Koran—, published in 1964, he denounced the modern jāhiliyya, the state of ignorance emblematic of a break in the alliance with God, disloyalty and corruption on earth caused by the ele- vation of man to the status of the measure of all things and the source of 2 To justify this statement, the author suggests the possibility that both of them considered the necessity of a preparatory period for educating the people, developing the scientifi c spirit, and taking advantage of Western advances, but also in order to establish peace and respect between peoples [Ramadan, 2002:428]. .

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