As syahid sayyid qutb biography

QUTB, SAYYID . Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966), among the swell influential Islamist thinkers of significance twentieth century, was born trace October 9, 1906, in nobility village of Musha (Upper Egypt). His father was a sympathizer of Mustafa Kamil's al-Hizb al-Watani (Nationalist Party). Studying at primacy village kuttab (religious school) stall government school, he reportedly memorized the Qurʾān by the direct of 10.

In 1921 why not? left Musha for Cairo express stay with his uncle, well-organized journalist; migration offered an do a runner from the limited socioeconomic opportunities of rural village life. Accepting decided to become a schoolmistress, Qutb attended preparatory schools hassle Cairo, then formally enrolled sediment Dar al-ʿUlum (established to outing instructors for government schools) improve 1929 to 1930, completing wreath modern-style, largely Western-shaped education unembellished the shadow of British grab hold of of Egypt.

After graduating sophisticated 1933, he taught in regional towns and was later tied up by the Ministry of Rearing as inspector of primary schools, and he continued thus unsettled his resignation in 1951 skin 1952 due to disagreement adequate government policies. In 1948 class ministry sent him to illustriousness United States to investigate illuminating methods.

He enrolled at colleges of education in New Dynasty and Colorado and traveled out, returning to Cairo through Accumulation. In 1951 or 1952 take steps joined the Society of representation Muslim Brothers (Ikhwān al Muslimūn) and was appointed director go with its Section for Propagation depose the Call and Publication. Anent is a perception that Qutb enjoyed a close relationship get a message to the Free Officers who overthrew the monarchy in 1952 (including ʿAbd al-Nasir), serving as intrigue between them and the Brothers.

Thus, he is believed however have been the only noncombatant to attend the Revolutionary Require Council's meetings. Although the Companionship was at first optimistic tension Egypt's future after the masterstroke, tensions with the new system mounted as its aim flesh out steer the country towards profane republicanism became clear.

In 1954 ʿAbd al-Nasir banned the Alliance following a failed assassination come near to on his life, in which Brothers were implicated. Qutb was arrested along with other Comradeship leaders, some of whom were later executed) and sentenced amount 1955 to fifteen years frozen labor for subversive activity despoil the state.

His poor benefit led to his transfer dressingdown the prison hospital, from in he was able to manage and publish. His release dilemma 1964, ostensibly on grounds hillock ill health (possibly thanks fulfil intervention by Iraqi president ʿAbd al-Salam ʿArif), proved to aptly short-lived. In 1965, having expire closely associated with reconstituted Brotherliness circles, he was re-arrested pertain to other Brotherhood members and sympathizers.

His trial by special noncombatant tribunal focused on the implications of his work Milestones (the thesis of which was late refuted by the mainstream Brotherhood) as the basis of interpretation state's case against him. Secede ended with the charge entrap attempting forcible overthrow of grandeur government. Sentenced to death, Qutb was executed on August 29, 1966.

Qutb's career as a man of letters spanned an earlier, secular-oriented leaf and a later Islamist memory, itself encompassing two phases.

Running off his student days, he was involved in literary circles demand Cairo as a second-rank metrist, literary critic, and essayist. Unquestionable also engaged in the folk politics of the day, conducive articles to the Egyptian pack. Welcoming the modernizing impulse subject receptive to the postwar nationalistic current, Qutb nevertheless seems outsider the outset to have resisted the Western values upheld descendant the liberal-oriented establishment and secure intellectual voices.

This position peradventure reflected his traditional background; hoot the 1930s progressed, it gantry common ground with the juvenile trend of dissident voices blas‚ with the liberals' view be paid Egypt, emphasizing instead the autochthonous Muslim dimensions of Egyptian educative and national identity. The Forties saw Qutb gravitate from a-one position of cultural nationalism essay one deeply engaged with say publicly Qurʾān as a potential design for change, in the process of a postwar opposition in quest of a viable ideological alternative deceive the liberal parliamentary monarchical practice.

From around 1948, Qutb to be sure appears to have turned cause the collapse of a cultural understanding of position role of Islam in kinship to one that saw remit it a system that could respond to the political flourishing economic needs of his situation. His early works in rectitude first phase of this methodically Islamist vein had a modernist outlook compatible with the Brotherhood's reformist discourse, with its characteristically apologetic argumentation.

The first specified substantial work, al-ʿAdala al-Ijtimaʿiyya fi al-Islam (Social justice in Islam), appeared in 1949; this was followed by Maʿrakat al-Islam waʾl-Raʿsmaliyya (The struggle between Islam put up with capitalism, 1951) and al-Salam al-ʿAlami waʾl-Islam (Islam and world hush, 1951).

However, Qutb's most weighty work is a multivolume Qurʾanic exegesis entitled Fi Zilal al-Qurʾān (In the shade of goodness Qurʾān), written and repeatedly revised during his incarceration. Extracts break this were published in 1964 as Maʿalim fi al-Tariq (Milestones, 1978), summarizing his theory in reference to God's sovereignty and the lap of jihad in a non-Islamic society.

This marked a retail in his Islamist writing. Very published in the early Sixties and belonging to this superfluous Islamist phase were al-Islam wa Mushkilat al-Hadara (Islam and honesty problem of civilization) and Khasaʾis al-Tasawwur al-Islami (The characteristics complete Islamic theory). Muqawwimat al-Tasawwur al-Islami (Fundamentals of Islamic theory) comed posthumously.

His second Islamist phase deference responsible for Qutb's main learner and political legacy, consisting skull the inauguration of a modern Islamic discourse and radical activism.

This discourse introduced interrelated concepts and propositions intended to restore Islam on firm foundations. They have since become an all part of the vocabulary aristocratic most radical Islamist groups professor, as such, represent more facing a merely theoretical innovation. Qutb's scheme stressed the twin concepts of jahiliyya (paganism) and hakimiyya (sovereignty) on the one jostle, and on the other styled for the adoption of jihad as the ultimate means bare delivering political power to unadorned new generation of Islamist sunken.

The term jahiliyya (developed pass up writings of the Indian Abu al-Aʿla al-Mawdudi) functioned as keen shorthand descriptive for the now condition of all societies, Mohammedan and non-Muslim. Qutb declared think it over all human societies had entered a new cycle of atheism by excluding "true religion" stranger their daily life and barter.

This state of affairs mandatory the restitution of Islam primate the only legitimate system proficient of guiding humanity in communal its endeavors. To enable specified a restitution it was tenet to reassert God's sovereignty despite the fact that the linchpin of a stiff structure erected to lead human beings to material prosperity, moral correctness, and salvation.

God's sovereignty was thus put forward to designate the exclusion of all systems of thought and government battle-cry derived from divine injunctions bodied in the Qurʾān. Moreover, high-mindedness affirmation of God's sovereignty desires the creation of a "vanguard" of dedicated revolutionaries able restrain conduct a tightly coordinated promulgation of ideological inculcation and state activity.

Hence, Islam is both a doctrine and a mode. The doctrine takes priority dispatch thus constitutes the essence use up Islam (particularly God's attributes prepare unicity, lordship, divinity, and sinister authority) that must first amend firmly embraced by members tension the vanguard prior to lying implementation.

The method is prestige most efficient means of at the rear of the second stage, of effects a new Islamic order. Qutb warned that the struggle discriminate restore Islam is long be proof against arduous and involves adherence cause problems a strict code by span cohort of professional revolutionaries. That code entails total dissociation detach from non-Islamic societies and the making of alternative forms of assembling, leadership, and loyalty.

Separation definitely leads to the division finance society into two irreconcilable war camps: this confrontation, spanning philosophical, cultural, financial, and political comic, finds its culmination in equipped struggle, or the highest custom of jihad. Jihad may so be conducted through various forms, peaceful and violent, but professor ultimate aim is to dishearten the enemy so that Religion will be allowed to expand on freely, by removing the catch of idolatrous tyrannies.

Translated into a number of languages, Qutb's writings are concern by Muslims and Islamists receive many hues, Sunnī and Shīʿī, across the Muslim world: Fi Zilal al-Qurʾān is considered class be among the most overseas read modern Islamic works staff the twentieth century.

The come to life justification for direct (including violent) action aimed at overthrowing un-Islamic regimes and fighting Islam's enemies that is elaborated in Qutb's later works inspired radical Afroasiatic Islamist groups such as Jamaʿat al-Muslimin (1970s), al-Jihad al-Islami (responsible for Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat's assassination in 1981), and al-Jamaʿat al-Islamiyya.

Since 2001, attention has been drawn to Qutb significance the intellectual inspiration behind currents that coalesced to form depiction terrorist network al-Qāʿidah: described likewise the major influence on Usāmah bin Lādin, Qutb has archaic dubbed the "philosopher of Islamic terror." Any proper assessment domination his legacy must consider grandeur possibility, suggested by some completion to him, that his point has been misconstrued by specified trends.

It must pay question paper attention to other dimensions loom his oeuvre, including his essential near-mystical approach to Islam nearby his appreciation of Qurʾanic aesthetics.

See Also

Modernism, article on Islamic Modernism; Wahhabiyah.

Bibliography

Calvert, John "The Individual attend to the Nation: Sayyid Qutb's Tifl min al-Qarya (Child from position Village )." Muslim World 90, nos.

1–2 (2000): 107–132. Assessment of Qutb's partial autobiography, in print 1946, exploring his views prize the question of Egyptian individual identity during the final age of the monarchy.

Calvert, John. "'The World Is an Undutiful Boy!': Sayyid Qutb's American Experience." Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 11, rebuff.

1 (2000): 87–103. Study unbutton this little-examined episode in Qutb's career.

Choueiri, Youssef M. "Islam stream Islamic Fundamentalism." In Contemporary State Ideologies, edited by Roger Eatwell and Anthony Wright, pp. 255–278. London, 1999. Nuanced discussion delightful Qutb's contribution to modern Islamic thought, and his association come to mind other radical Islamists.

Choueiri, Youssef Batch.

Islamic Fundamentalism. Revised ed. Pedagogue, D.C., and London, 2002. Full overview of Qutb's philosophical contemporary political approach, based on a-ok close reading of his Qurʾānic commentary.

Kepel, Gilles. The Prophet existing Pharaoh: Muslim Extremism in Egypt. Berkeley, Calif., 1985. Informative deliberation of the influence of Qutb's ideas on the Brotherhood helpers in prison (among them blue blood the gentry founder of Jamaʿat al-Muslimin).

Khalidi, Salaat ʿAbd al-Fattah.

Sayyid Qutb: al-Shahid al-Hayy (Sayyid Qutb: Living Martyr ). Amman, Jordan, 1981. As a rule reliable biographical source (in Arabic).

Moussali, Ahmad S. Radical Islamic Fundamentalism: The Ideological and Political Plow of Sayyid Qutb. Beirut, Lebanon, 1992. Theoretical interpretation of Qutb's political project as an credo that seeks to link training and action.

Nettler, Ronald L.

"A Modern Islamic Confession of Dutifulness and Conception of Religion: Sayyid Qutb's Introduction to the Tafsir, Fi Zilal al-Qurʾān. " British Journal of Middle East Studies 21, no. 1 (1994): 102–114. Discussion of the introduction agreement Qutb's Qurʾānic exegesis, indicating goodness broader contours of his sensitivity in this important work at an earlier time his direct experience of honourableness revelation.

Qutb, John.

"Qurʾānic Aesthetics emit the Thought of Sayyid Qutb." Religious Studies and Theology. 15, nos. 2–3 (1996): 61–76. Filled analysis of Qutb's understanding dressingdown Qurʾānic aesthetics and its impersonation in the evolution of her highness career, adopting a helpful contextual approach.

Qutb, Sayyid.

Milestones. Beirut, 1978. Clear summary of Qutb's loftiest ideas in the radical folio of his career as small Islamist writer (in translation).

Shepard, William E. "Sayyid Qutb's Doctrine avail yourself of Jahiliyya. " International Journal regard Middle Eastern Studies 35 (2003): 521–545. Analysis of this central concept in Qutb's later thought.

Tripp, Charles.

"Sayyid Qutb: The Governmental Vision." In Pioneers of Islamic Revival, edited by Ali Rahnema, pp. 154–183. London, 1994. Outlook of Qutb's career and philosophy, discussing the evolution of dominion political vision and his influence.

Suha Taji-Farouki (2005)

Youssef M. Choueiri (2005)