Modern Islamist Movements: History, Religion, and Politics (13 page)

he called a “drunken half-naked woman” who made Qutb a carnal offer, which as a Muslim shocked and was abhorrent to him. It was unimaginable to Qutb that a Muslim woman in his own country would behave in this way and make what he considered to be such a lewd overture.74 His other experiences in the United States reinforced his moral outrage with the West and confirmed in his mind the truth of Islam and its potential effectiveness in solving individual and societal problems.

The three features of American culture to which Qutb most objected were what he considered its materialism, bigotry, and loose sexual standards.75 According to Qutb, “Americans are not a people without virtues. But their virtues are those of production, organization, reason, and work. Their virtues were neither of social and human leadership nor of manners and emotions.”76 Qutb maintained that if the United States had any leadership role to play in the world, it was in the areas of production and material accomplishments; in his view, the United States offered nothing in terms of moral or educational leadership.77

He maintained that Americans engaged in production for its own sake and that they did not pursue these activities in order to achieve moral and spiritual strength or to attain greater levels of compassion. This tendency was evident in what Qutb saw as Americans’ obsessive attitudes about their work, their constant desire to acquire more possessions, and their hopes to impress people around them with their worldly success. One specific way that Qutb saw these fixations as manifesting themselves was in the overwhelming attention that people in Greeley, Colorado gave to the lawns, flowers, and shrubbery around their homes. As an Egyptian, Qutb found it unusual that homeowners in Greeley seemed to spend much of their free time cutting, watering, or fertilizing their lawns and taking other measures to assure the beauty of trees and shrubs. He found these behaviors to be yet another manifestation of Americans’ misplaced priorities and their desire to impress others in superficial ways.78

Qutb also experienced the brunt of bigotry when he was in the United States. He felt that some Americans were hostile to him because of his dark skin color. He was also deeply troubled by the United States’ support of Israel (which declared independence and received recognition from the United States the year Qutb began his sojourn there) as well as the negative portrayal of Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood in the American media. Qutb was particularly shocked by what he characterized as “the happy and joyous American reception” of Hasan al-Banna’s assassination in 1949.79 For Qutb, the United States’ hostility toward Islam was as evident within the country as it was in its foreign policy.80

Qutb found American attitudes toward sex and sexuality particularly disdainful. His recounting of a dance in a church in Greeley, Colorado provides a vivid depiction of his views on male-female relations in the United

States. He states that while the church is supposed to be a place of worship in Christianity, “it is in America for everything except worship,” and that laypersons and clergy consider the church “a place for meeting, friendliness, and for having a good time.”81 As evidence of what Qutb perceives to be the defilement of a church’s sacred space and the inappropriate mixing of the sexes, he writes:

The dance hall [in the church] was lit with red and blue flashes and a few white lamps. While people were listening to music from a gramophone, dancing intensified, the dance floor started swarming with legs, hands embraced others’ waists, and lips touched. The whole atmosphere was of romance. Then the minister came from his office, gave a searching look at the place and the people present, and encouraged those who were sitting and not taking part in the dance to participate…. [In order to intensify the romantic ambience,] he turned off the lights one by one, while not obstructing the dancers’ movements…. Then he chose another dance record suitable to the atmosphere, and encouraged those who were sitting to take part in the dance. He chose a famous song called “But, baby its cold outside.”82

As a Muslim, Qutb believed that men and women who are not married to each other must remain separate and absolutely no physical contact should take place between them, because any such contact can be sexually stimulating and potentially lead to premarital or extra-marital sex. Qutb found it particularly offensive that such contact took place in a Christian place of worship and was encouraged by the minister, who in Qutb’s view was the very person who should have discouraged it. Qutb would find such behavior between men and women absolutely unthinkable in a mosque. He believed that this kind of loose and, in his view, sexually provocative behavior, especially in a space intended for worship, was a prime example of Christianity’s and the West’s moral degradation.83

By the end of his two years in the United States, Qutb was convinced of his Islamic beliefs and knew that he did not want his native Egypt to be a reflec- tion of American culture in any way. He returned to Egypt in the summer of 1951 and became a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.84 In 1952, he was elected to the Brotherhood’s leadership council and was appointed to chair its committee for the spread of Islam.85 In July 1954, Hasan al-Hudaybi, the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood at the time, appointed Qutb as editor-in-chief of the Brotherhood’s newspaper entitled The Muslim Brotherhood.86 After a Muslim Brother attempted to assassinate Gamal Abd al-Nasser in October 1954, Sayyid Qutb, much like other militant members of the Muslim Brotherhood, was given a lengthy prison sentence – in his case it was 25 years of hard labor – for his alleged role in the assassination attempt and in conspiring to overthrow Egypt’s government.87

Although illness forced Qutb to spend much of his time in the prison infirmary, he was aware of the horrific conditions that surrounded him in Tura prison (located in a southern suburb of Cairo) where he was held.88 The imprisoned Brothers lived in constant paralyzing fear of being killed by prison guards, and they and Qutb were brutally tortured.89 Several of the prisoners, terrified that they would be killed if they went to their daily work assignment of rock breaking, refused to go to work in June 1957, locking themselves in their cells.90 Armed soldiers then entered the prison cells and killed 21 of these Muslim Brothers.91 As Qutb reflected on these deaths and the merciless tortures, the assassination of Hasan al-Banna in 1949, and the 1954 hangings of the Muslim Brotherhood members found guilty of the assassination attempt on Gamal Abd al-Nasser, he concluded that Nasser, the prison guards, soldiers, and others who were part of Nasser’s government could not be called Muslims, even though they considered themselves to be Muslims.

Qutb believed that it was impossible for any true Muslim to treat other Muslims, or any other human beings, with such barbaric and heartless cruelty. Qutb implied that Nasser himself, as well as the guards and torturers, had completely forgotten God.92 Qutb’s writings suggested that people who worked for the Egyptian government no longer worshipped God, but idolized Nasser and the state instead. These secularized individuals, who called themselves Muslims, ignored the ideals of justice, compassion, and mercy that the Quran proclaimed and, in doing so, had rejected Islam. These ideas and experiences became the groundwork for one of Qutb’s most influential contributions to modern Islamic thought, which was his book Milestones, first published in 1964.93 Yet, because Qutb feared retribution from Nasser and the Egyptian government, he did not specifically name Nasser or the Egyptian government; rather, the descriptions in his writings strongly suggest that he was referring to Nasser’s government and similar regimes.94

In the midst of the tension and suffering he and other prisoners experienced, Qutb used part of his time in Tura prison to write Milestones, one of his most famous and widely read works. In this book, Qutb adapts the classic Islamic notion of jahiliyya (or ignorance) for his contemporary setting. Before Qutb’s Milestones, one common understanding of jahiliyya among Muslims was that it referred to virtually all non-Islamic people beginning from the time of Muhammad. In other words, throughout much of Islamic history, one understanding of this word was in reference to people who were ignorant (jahil) of Islam. For example, during the life of Muhammad, the non-Muslims who attacked him and his early community were one group who were considered to be part of (seventh-century) jahili culture. Historically, many Muslims believe that one reason that Muhammad and the early Muslim community were justified in taking up arms against their attackers was precisely because these attackers were not Muslims.

As Islam expanded over the centuries, Muslim intellectuals drew a distinction between Muslim regions (which were then by definition part of Dar al-Islam or the “House of Islam”), on the one hand, and non-Muslim regions (which were part of Dar al-Harb or the “House of War”), on the other. Dar al-Harb was a reference to the regions where ignorance of Islam (jahiliyya) predominated.

Although before Qutb’s time, there was precedent in Islamic history for one group of Muslims denouncing another group of Muslims as non- Muslims. For example, the medieval Damascene Muslim intellectual Taqi al-Din Ahmad ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328) developed an Islamically-based worldview that branded the invading Mongols as non-Muslims for the purpose of enabling Muslims of the Middle East to defend themselves against the Mongols.95 Qutb made a pivotal contribution to Islamist thought in applying the notion of jahiliyya (ignorance) to: (1) people in the twentieth century who considered themselves Muslim and in Qutb’s opinion were not, and (2) other non-Muslims. Specifically, Qutb implied that Nasser and members of the Egyptian government were members of a jahili (ignorant) society because: (1) they treated other Muslims with extreme brutality in such a way that contradicted the teachings of the Quran and Hadith; (2) they believed that they, and not God, were sovereign; and (3) they were idolaters in the sense that they worshipped the state and its leaders instead of God.

Qutb contended there are three other kinds of jahili societies:

In sharp contrast to these jahili cultures, Qutb envisioned what he perceived to be the true Islamic society, which, he believed, should be based on the Quran, Hadith, and Sharia law, and would be comprised of true Muslim rulers, who would, among other things, support Islamic education and invoke strict laws governing the relations between Muslim men and women.97

In addition to presenting his definition of jahili society and asserting his vision for the ideal Islamic state, Qutb described the process by which jahili society should be dismantled and an Islamic state constructed in its place. For him, the establishment of the true Islamic state would require a revolution led by a vanguard comprised of true Muslims who would model their beliefs and actions on those of the first Quranic generation (i.e., the Prophet Muhammad’s companions).98 Qutb believed that this first generation had almost perfectly emulated the ideals of the Quran, Hadith, and Muhammad’s life and teachings. As soon as Muslims allowed themselves to be influenced by the non-Islamic ideas and practices of Byzantium and Persia, their religion began to be contaminated.99

According to Qutb, the contemporary vanguard must fully absorb the Quran’s teaching and reject every aspect of jahili culture.100 At the same time, for Qutb there are two stages in the procession from the birth of the Islamic vanguard to the establishment of a true Islamic society. First, there is the phase of spiritual maturation, which is the stage where members of the Muslim vanguard comprehend the Quran’s true meaning and reject the ideas and practices of jahili culture. The second phase involves the actual battle against jahili society. Qutb directly states that this battle or type of jihad must be physical in nature and he vociferously criticizes Muslims and others who have defined jihad solely as self-defense or solely in peaceful terms.101

For Qutb the only legitimate choice that people have is to choose Islam. In this spirit, Qutb maintains that Muslims have a duty to take up arms against the jahili forces, much like Muhammad and the early Muslim com- munity of his day took up arms to physically fight the jahili powers of their day. Qutb believes that physically fighting the jahili forces is fully consistent with Muhammad’s actions and the Quran’s proclamations. Qutb states that for the first 13 years after Muhammad received the first revelation (in Qutb’s estimation the period from 610 until 623), Muhammad called “people to God through preaching, without fighting … and was commanded to restrain himself and to practice patience and forbearance.”102 After God commanded Muhammad and the early Muslim community to emigrate (or engage in the hijra) to Medina, God commanded “Muhammad to fight those who fought him and to restrain himself from those who did not make war with him.”103 Qutb states that at some point after that, God commanded Muhammad “to fight the polytheists” until Islam was “fully established.”104 Qutb interpreted physical jihad and its relationship with the making and breaking of peace treaties during Muhammad’s lifetime by stating that according to God’s command, “as long as the non-believers with whom [Muhammad] had a peace treaty met their obligations, he should fulfill the articles of the treaty, but if [the non-believers] broke this treaty, then they should be given notice of having broken it; until then, no war should be declared. If [the non- believers] persisted, then he should fight with them.”105