Chapter Three - An Islamic Totality in the Ideology of Sayyid Qutb

Summary

“Totality” has indeed enjoyed a privileged place in the discourse of Western culture. Resonating with affirmative connotations, it has generally been associated with other positively charged words, such as coherence, order, fulfillment, harmony, plentitude, meaningfulness, consensus and community. And concomitantly, it has been contrasted with such negatively valenced concepts as alienation, fragmentation, disorder, conflict, contradiction, serialization, atomization and estrangement. Although it has not entirely escaped censure—Albert Camus’ linkage of it with totalitarianism in the Rebel is a striking example—it has normally been imbued with what Lovejoy called “metaphysical pathos” the power to arouse a positive mood on the part of its users by the congeniality of its subtle associations.

There is a general tendency among most versions of radical Islamic ideology to portray themselves as a complete system of life for all of humans regardless of time and space. Among these, the discourse of Sayyid Qutb is one of the most influential and comprehensive, attempting to create a Neo-Islamic civilization to compete with, and eventually replace, not only modern authoritarian states in the Muslim lands, but also the modern welfare state of liberal democracies as well as the now-defunct communist systems.

There is no doubt that Qutb's influence on other Islamic thinkers and revolutionaries has been quite significant. The impact of his thought on Islamic movements is not confined to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, as the influence of his ideology in other Muslim countries has been studied by a few scholars so far. This chapter attempts to present a close examination and evaluation of Qutb's discourse as a model of a comprehensive socio-political system as he propounded it throughout his career as an Islamist. Qutb's methodical thought aimed at creating a viable design of a utopian substitute for late modern societies. In this pursuit, he mainly relied on his interpretation of the Qur'an and Hadith directly, effectively circumventing centuries worth of Islamic jurisprudence, theology, philosophy and Sufi thought. The very fact that he skirted these traditional mediums for the interpretation of Islamic holy texts itself indicates that in his interpretation of the Qur'an and Hadith he was ironically as much influenced by modern socioeconomic discourses and their intellectual methods as well substance, as he tried to refute them. In this sense his interpretation of Islamic holy texts is not traditional at all.