Sayyid Qutb —— The Life and Legacy of a Radical Islamic Intellectual

Good piece of research. A little repetitive and questionable in structure as a learning document, but very much worth the dedication to read it. It shows very well the extreme two faces of Sunni salafism, with its compassionate side towards the surrounding loyal poor country people (that also acts as a buying in, recruiting technique) and the call for violent action against jahilliya (infidels). Not clear why Qutb moves from secularist scholar to radicalism.

Sayyid Qutb has been demonized in the West as the intellectual father of radical jihad. Born in the early years of the twentieth century in a small town in south Egypt, he started as a poet, literary critic, and education bureaucrat, but became an erudite interpretor of the Koran. He spent 20 months in the United States, with the longest stretch at the now-University of Northern Colorado in Greeley. Upon his return he became involved with the Moslem Brotherhood, and after the killing of Colonel-President al-Nassar (Qutb was not involved) was imprisoned for most of a decade and executed in 1966. Another author, John Calvert, has written extensively about Qutb's life and his time in the States. But Calvert's book, which was at one time sold in the U.S. by Columbia University Press, appears now to only be available from its original British publisher. That's the problem. To avoid duplicating or appearing to plagarize Calvert's book, Toth only spends about 80 pages discussing Qutb's biography. The remainder, 190 or so pages, is a very detailed discussion of his philosophies and theories. Unless one is well versed in Islamic sociology and is already familiar with Qutb's life, much of this book will go over your head. Addressing this book on it's own terms, I do have a couple of concerns. Toth asserts that Qutb was moved towards radicalism by what he saw in his United States visit, but he does not discuss in detail what Qutb found disturbing, let alone radicalizing. He does not connect the dots. The Greeley was, in the early 1950s, a fairly quiet, conservative farm town, and the only specific that Toth gives as to Quitb's grievences is that the citizens did not seem to care much about a sense of community, spending more time taking care of their lawns than attending community and religious functions. Likewise, while the Egyptian prison system was (and is) notoriously bad, Toth does not explain what it is about the system that pushes inmates to radicalism in the direction of fundamentalist Islam as opposed to, say, Tudeh communism-Islam. Qutb's brand of Islam was notable for being an alternative to all of modernism. It existed in sort of a timeless idealized unchanging present lodged somewhere around 950 c.e. Even bleached of its radical action (i.e. violent) elements, one gets the impression that a westerized version would look something like the Old Order Amish or the Mennonites of central Kansas. While Toth mentions that there were other schools of Islamic thought that were not antithetical to modernism, he does not explain or contrast them to Qutb's timeless pre-modern utopianism. As a result, one is left wondering if there really was a practical alternative to Qutb's vision, or what it would look like. This somewhat defeats Toth's stated purpose, which is to make Islam three-dimensional to westerners and lay to rest the panic-mongering of the "they're coming, and they're gonna shove you back to the stone age" yellow journalists. The overall result is that Toth's book is rather static. It is a highly detailed explanation of what Qutb thought (and wrote, a preached), but it doesn't really explain the evolutionally process of how he got there or why. It does was the author set out to do, but I think he could have done it AND made it a useful stand-alone Qutb biography at the same time.

The author begins his book by the emphatic statement that "Sayyid Qutb was one of the most radical Islamist thinkers of the 20th century" whom Paul Berman, in turn, called "The Philosopher of Islamic Terror". These seemingly contradictory portrayals are both correct. Toth introduces his book that "aspires to make intellectual, political, and sociological sense of his ideas throughout his lifetime and afterward." Did he succeed? He partially did in my opinion but the treatise seemed more of an apologia of Qutb's life and overcompensation to balance the Orientalists' image of the man as "a diabolical genius behind terrorism." The 382 pages book is organized in two parts, an Appendix, Notes and a bibliography. It is more akin to a dissertation than a layman's book for popular consumption. Part One: contains 5 chapters that introduce the subject and proceed gradually from Qutb's early years in his birth village of Musha, in the Asyut Province of Upper Egypt, his primary and secondary education in the local school where only religious courses were studied. Qutb eventually moved to Cairo where he was exposed to a much broader education based on the British system, and eventually, enrolled in Dar Al Ulum (Teachers' College) from which he graduated in 1933. While in college he met Hassan El Bana, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood (in 1928) who graduated one year ahead. The two men became friends and Qutb drifted from secularism to a moderate modernist Islam. As an adult, Qutb had a palpable disdain for Imams and their traditional method of education, manifested by his repeated conflicts with the Muslim establishment, which in turn banned his books from Al-Azhar University (the pre-eminent Islamic school in the world) declaring him "munharif", a deviant. He began his professional career as a poet, critic and a writer, producing 24 books in his lifetime. His first published novel was Ashwak (Thorns) received minor success. In 1939 he became a functionary of the Ministry of Education "Wizaret el Ma'arif". He mingled among the literati, intellectuals and influential politicians of his time. His writings such as "Social Justice in Islam" (1949), "The Battle between Islam and Capitalism" (1951) and " World Peace and Islam" (1951) became quite popular and were on the curricula of some schools. Qutb spent 20 months (1948-50) in the USA training in educational administration in Washington ,D.C., Stanford University and Greely Colorado and travelled widely across the States. He also visited several European cities during his return trip to Egypt. This journey exposed Qutb to Western culture and was the catalyst of his revulsion of capitalist societies and his leanings towards Marxist/Leninist ideology. Part Two, about two thirds of the tome, divided into six chapters, deals entirely with Qutb's philosophy, teachings and his radicalization; his ideas of changing Egypt and the Muslim world, eradicating depravity and decadence, revitalizing Islamic culture and economy, ultimately culminating in a utopia of an Islamic Umma ruled justly by Sharia'a modeled on early Islamic history of the initial four Khalifas that succeeded the Prophet Mohamed. In the Appendix, Toth introduces the reader to several contemporary political, intellectual and religious personalities, such as Hassan Al Bana, Taha Hussain, Mohamed Rashid Rida and a few others. Included at the end of the book are three papers by Qutb on "Women and the Family", "People of the Book, Dhimmis" and "Apologetics". This recent biography is another attempt by a western writer (employed at NYU in Abu Dhabi) to moderate the image of a virulently anti Western Islamist and to white wash his intellectual progeny and followers, the Muslim Brotherhood. To understand Qutb, one most first understand his origins. Sayyid Qutb grew up in a backwater village in southern Egypt the son of an "effendi" (educated man) who was manager of an estate of a wealthy family. His community was steeped in the conservative Shafi'i rite of Islamic religion and the mythology of the "fellahins" (peasant laborers). Sayyid's education was focused on and limited to religious studies at the local school. During his formative years his social interactions were governed by restrictedly conservative customs. When he arrived in Cairo, a 23 years old man, he experienced culture shock. As a shy, introverted and socially awkward individual, he found that he could not easily fit into the modern liberal society of Cairo, where men and women intermingled at University and at work. Sayyid was uncomfortable around women, especially educated ones, and had great difficulty relating to them. He remained a bachelor his entire life. The freedom of Western women offended him, solidifying his opinion of the West as a cesspool of decadence that should not be emulated but must be eradicated. Consequently, he retracted to his comfort zone of religion. Qutb never totally embraced secularism but, under the influence of Hassan al Banna, he dabbled in communist ideology that he eventually tried to incorporate within his writings on Islam. Many prominent "Ulamas" consider Qutb, al Banna, Abu Ala'a Mawdudi and al-Nabahani as misguided Islamist intellectuals of the 20th century who offered a brand of Islam blended with elements of Socialism, Communism, Ba'athism, presenting them as reform, and all of which required violent revolutions to topple the tyrants and replace them with Islam rule. Qutb took the Leninist approach of a small band of elitist vanguards who engineer a coup or revolution (and everyone else were apostates). When his friend and mentor Hassan al Banna was hanged in 1949, for his assassination of Nokrashi Pasha, Qutb was in America but that unalterably radicalized him against the government. Upon his return he began to agitate against the government, espousing violence. In 1953 he assumed a leadership position in the Muslim Brotherhood and became its guiding ideologue, railing against the exploitation, apostasy, and immorality of the government and the decadence of fellow Muslims aping Western behavior. The foundation of Qutb's ideology was the concept of "Jahilyyah" (ignorance..of Islam), a barbaric way of life contrary to the teaching of the Prophet and Allah. Anyone or government living in Jahilyya should be eliminated to allow the Islamic resurrection to flourish. As one of the instigators of the failed assassination attempt of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the very popular Egyptian President, Qutb and thousands of "Brothers" were arrested and imprisoned (1954). During his confinement, Qutb wrote his political manifesto "Signposts" (Ma'alem fi al tareeq) and the 30 volume opus "In the shadow of the Qura'an" (Fi zil al qura'an) "tafsir", an exegesis that he liberally plagiarized from the work of Amin al-Kholi. Sayyid was freed, along with all the jailed "Brothers", by Nasser, in 1964, but was rearrested again for plotting once more to overthrow the government. Sayyid Qutb was tried and hanged on August 29, 1966. His venomous ideology is the guiding light of the Muslim Brotherhood, as shown in 1981 by the assassination of President Anwar al Sadat by a militant offshoot "Jama'at al Jihad" (Society of struggle) led by Muhamed Adb al-Salam Farag. The latter penned a pamphlet, "The Neglected Obligation" (Al Farida al-Gha-i-bah) mirroring Qutb's ideas "that acceptance of a government was only possible when that government fully implemented Shari'a and that Jihad is not only "the neglected obligation" but it is the most important obligation of true Muslims". Inspired by Qutub, today, the majority of Muslim populations in the Arab and Islamic states favor Shariah law, including death for apostasy, veiling and restrictive subordination of females (a tribal, but not Islamic, custom), amputations for thievery and stoning as retribution for adultery - a retrogression to brutal, savage and barbaric early-medieaval Arabian tribal culture. Sayyid Qutb was a misogynist who advocated subordination of women, in spite of the assertion of Toth "that he read to the women of the village". He was a virulent anti-Semite and considered all non-believers dhimmis who should be subjugated and pay the Jiziah tax. Labeling Qutb a "moderate Islamist" in his early years is an oxymoron and non sequitur, similar to saying "moderately pregnant" (you are either pregnant or not!). The majority of true Muslims in the world are benign peaceful people, but there are no "moderate Islamists"; Islamists are fascist radicals who advocate violence and terror. The many examples of the author's overreach to make his subject less repulsive and more sympathetic, did not work on me; I read Qutb's writings in their original Arabic and no amount of subtle burnishing can make me change my opinion. The three stars are not because of the unsympathetic subject of the book but for its inconsistencies.

It appears that the author had a deadline to meet, and thus wrote one hurried draft. There are repetitions within pages of each other; chronological ambiguities; words that could have easily been excised. In short, poorly written.

Great deal.

Sayyid Qutb has been demonized in the West as the intellectual father of radical jihad. Born in the early years of the twentieth century in a small town in south Egypt, he started as a poet, literary critic, and education bureaucrat, but became an erudite interpretor of the Koran. He spent 20 months in the United States, with the longest stretch at the now-University of Northern Colorado in Greeley. Upon his return he became involved with the Moslem Brotherhood, and after the killing of Colonel-President al-Nassar (Qutb was not involved) was imprisoned for most of a decade and executed in 1966.Another author, John Calvert, has written extensively about Qutb's life and his time in the States. But Calvert's book, which was at one time sold in the U.S. by Columbia University Press, appears now to only be available from its original British publisher. That's the problem. To avoid duplicating or appearing to plagarize Calvert's book, Toth only spends about 80 pages discussing Qutb's biography. The remainder, 190 or so pages, is a very detailed discussion of his philosophies and theories. Unless one is well versed in Islamic sociology and is already familiar with Qutb's life, much of this book will go over your head.Addressing this book on it's own terms, I do have a couple of concerns. Toth asserts that Qutb was moved towards radicalism by what he saw in his United States visit, but he does not discuss in detail what Qutb found disturbing, let alone radicalizing. He does not connect the dots. The Greeley was, in the early 1950s, a fairly quiet, conservative farm town, and the only specific that Toth gives as to Quitb's grievences is that the citizens did not seem to care much about a sense of community, spending more time taking care of their lawns than attending community and religious functions. Likewise, while the Egyptian prison system was (and is) notoriously bad, Toth does not explain what it is about the system that pushes inmates to radicalism in the direction of fundamentalist Islam as opposed to, say, Tudeh communism-Islam.Qutb's brand of Islam was notable for being an alternative to all of modernism. It existed in sort of a timeless idealized unchanging present lodged somewhere around 950 c.e. Even bleached of its radical action (i.e. violent) elements, one gets the impression that a westerized version would look something like the Old Order Amish or the Mennonites of central Kansas. While Toth mentions that there were other schools of Islamic thought that were not antithetical to modernism, he does not explain or contrast them to Qutb's timeless pre-modern utopianism. As a result, one is left wondering if there really was a practical alternative to Qutb's vision, or what it would look like. This somewhat defeats Toth's stated purpose, which is to make Islam three-dimensional to westerners and lay to rest the panic-mongering of the "they're coming, and they're gonna shove you back to the stone age" yellow journalists.The overall result is that Toth's book is rather static. It is a highly detailed explanation of what Qutb thought (and wrote, a preached), but it doesn't really explain the evolutionally process of how he got there or why. It does was the author set out to do, but I think he could have done it AND made it a useful stand-alone Qutb biography at the same time.

The author begins his book by the emphatic statement that "Sayyid Qutb was one of the most radical Islamist thinkers of the 20th century" whom Paul Berman, in turn, called "The Philosopher of Islamic Terror". These seemingly contradictory portrayals are both correct. Toth introduces his book that "aspires to make intellectual, political, and sociological sense of his ideas throughout his lifetime and afterward." Did he succeed? He partially did in my opinion but the treatise seemed more of an apologia of Qutb's life and overcompensation to balance the Orientalists' image of the man as "a diabolical genius behind terrorism."The 382 pages book is organized in two parts, an Appendix, Notes and a bibliography. It is more akin to a dissertation than a layman's book for popular consumption.Part One: contains 5 chapters that introduce the subject and proceed gradually from Qutb's early years in his birth village of Musha, in the Asyut Province of Upper Egypt, his primary and secondary education in the local school where only religious courses were studied. Qutb eventually moved to Cairo where he was exposed to a much broader education based on the British system, and eventually, enrolled in Dar Al Ulum (Teachers' College) from which he graduated in 1933. While in college he met Hassan El Bana, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood (in 1928) who graduated one year ahead. The two men became friends and Qutb drifted from secularism to a moderate modernist Islam. As an adult, Qutb had a palpable disdain for Imams and their traditional method of education, manifested by his repeated conflicts with the Muslim establishment, which in turn banned his books from Al-Azhar University (the pre-eminent Islamic school in the world) declaring him "munharif", a deviant.He began his professional career as a poet, critic and a writer, producing 24 books in his lifetime. His first published novel was Ashwak (Thorns) received minor success. In 1939 he became a functionary of the Ministry of Education "Wizaret el Ma'arif". He mingled among the literati, intellectuals and influential politicians of his time. His writings such as "Social Justice in Islam" (1949), "The Battle between Islam and Capitalism" (1951) and " World Peace and Islam" (1951) became quite popular and were on the curricula of some schools.Qutb spent 20 months (1948-50) in the USA training in educational administration in Washington ,D.C., Stanford University and Greely Colorado and travelled widely across the States. He also visited several European cities during his return trip to Egypt. This journey exposed Qutb to Western culture and was the catalyst of his revulsion of capitalist societies and his leanings towards Marxist/Leninist ideology.Part Two, about two thirds of the tome, divided into six chapters, deals entirely with Qutb's philosophy, teachings and his radicalization; his ideas of changing Egypt and the Muslim world, eradicating depravity and decadence, revitalizing Islamic culture and economy, ultimately culminating in a utopia of an Islamic Umma ruled justly by Sharia'a modeled on early Islamic history of the initial four Khalifas that succeeded the Prophet Mohamed.In the Appendix, Toth introduces the reader to several contemporary political, intellectual and religious personalities, such as Hassan Al Bana, Taha Hussain, Mohamed Rashid Rida and a few others.Included at the end of the book are three papers by Qutb on "Women and the Family", "People of the Book, Dhimmis" and "Apologetics".This recent biography is another attempt by a western writer (employed at NYU in Abu Dhabi) to moderate the image of a virulently anti Western Islamist and to white wash his intellectual progeny and followers, the Muslim Brotherhood. To understand Qutb, one most first understand his origins. Sayyid Qutb grew up in a backwater village in southern Egypt the son of an "effendi" (educated man) who was manager of an estate of a wealthy family. His community was steeped in the conservative Shafi'i rite of Islamic religion and the mythology of the "fellahins" (peasant laborers). Sayyid's education was focused on and limited to religious studies at the local school. During his formative years his social interactions were governed by restrictedly conservative customs. When he arrived in Cairo, a 23 years old man, he experienced culture shock. As a shy, introverted and socially awkward individual, he found that he could not easily fit into the modern liberal society of Cairo, where men and women intermingled at University and at work. Sayyid was uncomfortable around women, especially educated ones, and had great difficulty relating to them. He remained a bachelor his entire life. The freedom of Western women offended him, solidifying his opinion of the West as a cesspool of decadence that should not be emulated but must be eradicated. Consequently, he retracted to his comfort zone of religion.Qutb never totally embraced secularism but, under the influence of Hassan al Banna, he dabbled in communist ideology that he eventually tried to incorporate within his writings on Islam.Many prominent "Ulamas" consider Qutb, al Banna, Abu Ala'a Mawdudi and al-Nabahani as misguided Islamist intellectuals of the 20th century who offered a brand of Islam blended with elements of Socialism, Communism, Ba'athism, presenting them as reform, and all of which required violent revolutions to topple the tyrants and replace them with Islam rule.Qutb took the Leninist approach of a small band of elitist vanguards who engineer a coup or revolution (and everyone else were apostates).When his friend and mentor Hassan al Banna was hanged in 1949, for his assassination of Nokrashi Pasha, Qutb was in America but that unalterably radicalized him against the government. Upon his return he began to agitate against the government, espousing violence. In 1953 he assumed a leadership position in the Muslim Brotherhood and became its guiding ideologue, railing against the exploitation, apostasy, and immorality of the government and the decadence of fellow Muslims aping Western behavior. The foundation of Qutb's ideology was the concept of "Jahilyyah" (ignorance..of Islam), a barbaric way of life contrary to the teaching of the Prophet and Allah. Anyone or government living in Jahilyya should be eliminated to allow the Islamic resurrection to flourish.As one of the instigators of the failed assassination attempt of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the very popular Egyptian President, Qutb and thousands of "Brothers" were arrested and imprisoned (1954). During his confinement, Qutb wrote his political manifesto "Signposts" (Ma'alem fi al tareeq) and the 30 volume opus "In the shadow of the Qura'an" (Fi zil al qura'an) "tafsir", an exegesis that he liberally plagiarized from the work of Amin al-Kholi.Sayyid was freed, along with all the jailed "Brothers", by Nasser, in 1964, but was rearrested again for plotting once more to overthrow the government. Sayyid Qutb was tried and hanged on August 29, 1966.His venomous ideology is the guiding light of the Muslim Brotherhood, as shown in 1981 by the assassination of President Anwar al Sadat by a militant offshoot "Jama'at al Jihad" (Society of struggle) led by Muhamed Adb al-Salam Farag. The latter penned a pamphlet, "The Neglected Obligation" (Al Farida al-Gha-i-bah) mirroring Qutb's ideas "that acceptance of a government was only possible when that government fully implemented Shari'a and that Jihad is not only "the neglected obligation" but it is the most important obligation of true Muslims".Inspired by Qutub, today, the majority of Muslim populations in the Arab and Islamic states favor Shariah law, including death for apostasy, veiling and restrictive subordination of females (a tribal, but not Islamic, custom), amputations for thievery and stoning as retribution for adultery - a retrogression to brutal, savage and barbaric early-medieaval Arabian tribal culture.Sayyid Qutb was a misogynist who advocated subordination of women, in spite of the assertion of Toth "that he read to the women of the village". He was a virulent anti-Semite and considered all non-believers dhimmis who should be subjugated and pay the Jiziah tax. Labeling Qutb a "moderate Islamist" in his early years is an oxymoron and non sequitur, similar to saying "moderately pregnant" (you are either pregnant or not!). The majority of true Muslims in the world are benign peaceful people, but there are no "moderate Islamists"; Islamists are fascist radicals who advocate violence and terror.The many examples of the author's overreach to make his subject less repulsive and more sympathetic, did not work on me; I read Qutb's writings in their original Arabic and no amount of subtle burnishing can make me change my opinion. The three stars are not because of the unsympathetic subject of the book but for its inconsistencies.