Canada and the World
Current Events with a Canadian Perspective
Last update
14 February 2011
Sayyid Qutb
and Muslim Extremism
As Egyptians struggled to throw off decades of
repression some feared the rise of Islamic extremism; this may be a needless worry
According to Doug Saunders (Globe and Mail, February 5, 2011) Muslim extremism has grown as a reaction to the suppression of Islam by secular and despotic leaders.
Hossam el-
“When...popular movements are repressed,” writes Saunders, “as Egypt has done brutally
for six decades, the frustrated adherents have switched to non-
One direct line leads us to the village of Musha in Egypt.
Birth of Sayyid Qutb
In October 1906, a second child was born into the family of Haij Qutb Ahrahim in
that village. Sayyid Qutb (pronounced say-
His father was known as a political activist. It didn’t take long for Sayyid Qutb to follow in his father’s footsteps; he joined the campaign for Egyptian independence from British rule in 1919. At the age of 13 he was speaking to crowds in his village against imperialism and in favour of freedom.
He received a modern, secular, post-
Shocked by Western Society
Most people knowledgeable about Sayyid Qutb’s life describe his time in the U.S. as a turning point. He seems to have been horrified by America’s materialism, racial discrimination, and sexual freedoms. He was particularly dismayed by the independence of women.
He returned to an Egypt in turmoil. A group of army officers had overthrown a corrupt king who had been propped up by the British.
Under the leadership of Gamal Abdul Nasser (shown here being carried on the shoulders
of supporters), the new government wanted to run Egypt as a secular society. Sayyid
Qutb had other ideas.
He wanted to turn Islam into a political movement and create a new society based on the ancient principles of the Koran.
Sayyid Qutb and the Muslim Brotherhood
Qutb joined the Muslim Brotherhood and became the editor of its journal. Pretty soon he was recognized as one of Islam’s main thinkers in the Arab world.
There was plenty of common ground between the world views of Gamal Nasser and Sayyid
Qutb. Both dreamed of an Arab world reborn as the dominant power it had once been.
Both wanted to crush the brand-
But, the two men, and their followers, were deeply divided over the role of Islam in the new, independent Egypt. Qutb pictured an Islamic government that strictly enforced the sharia legal code that is set out in the Koran.
Nasser wanted no interference from religious leaders in the way he governed.
Nasser Cracks Down on Muslim Brotherhood
After a member of the Muslim Brotherhood tried to bump off President Nasser he cracked down on the organization. Some of the group’s leaders escaped into exile, but Sayyid Qutb decided to stay in Egypt.
That was a poor choice. In 1954, he was arrested and 
kept in jail for 10 years, where
his is shown at right. His treatment in prison was appalling and included frequent
torture. The experience turned him into a full-
Supporters smuggled papers into him and he began writing a massive work: In the Shade of the Koran runs to 30 volumes.
He discusses the themes of the Koran, such as rules of divorce, punishments for crimes and for breaking your word, dietary laws, and a thousand other concepts. He also builds a withering criticism of modern life, particularly that of the Western world.
Qutb’s Writing Influences Jihadists
Paul Berman is an expert on Sayyid Qutb. In a lengthy New York Times article in 2003 he described some of the reasons Qutb found our society so obnoxious:
“Qutb wrote that, all over the world, humans had reached a moment of unbearable crisis. The human race had lost touch with human nature. Man’s inspiration, intelligence, and morality were degenerating. Sexual relations were deteriorating ‘to a level lower than the beasts.’ Man was miserable, anxious, and sceptical, sinking into idiocy, insanity, and crime. People were turning, in their unhappiness, to drugs [and] alcohol...He figured that…the richest countries were the unhappiest of all.”
Sayyid Qutb believed the cause of all this misery was that humans had turned their backs on God. His version of human history sees European Christians and Jews increasingly divorced from their spiritual lives. What really got under his skin was the way in which these godless ways were infecting Muslims.
As Europeans conquered the world they imposed their culture on others. The result was humiliation among the conquered peoples who were robbed of their spiritual existence. Qutb said the goal of these outside forces was nothing less than the extermination (his word) of Islam.
He believed, as do most Islamic extremists today, that there has been a centuries-
As Qutb saw it, the only way to undo the harm was to return to living under a series of divine laws as revealed by God to the prophet Mohammed. He called for the formation of a Muslim vanguard to bring this about.
This was to be a small group of devout Muslims who were to engage in a jihad, a struggle to establish a Muslim world.
This sort of talk got him into even more trouble with Egypt’s President Nasser. In 1966, Sayyid Qutb was brought before a court and accused of plotting to overthrow the state. He was quickly convicted and executed by hanging.
Philosopher of Violence
Among his thousands of followers were many who formed terrorist groups in the 1970s.
Their aim was to carry out the jihad Sayyid Qutb had called for. They massacred tourists. In 1981, they assassinated Anwar Sadat, the president who followed Nasser. Sadat was killed, in part, because he made peace with Israel.
The next Egyptian leader was Hosni Mubarak who immediately declared a state of emergency existed in the country. That state of emergency has been renewed continuously every three years since. With constitutional rights suspended, President Mubarak crushed all opposition and threw as many as 30,000 political prisoners into jail.
The White House
President Hosni Mubarak (above with U.S. President George W. Bush) enjoyed strong support from most American administrations. This propping up of a dictator was seen by Western leaders as preferable to seeing Egypt fall into the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood. With the uprising of Egyptians in January 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama said it was time for Mubarak to go.
Egyptian Terror Groups go International
In later years, the violent groups in Egypt merged with Osama bin Laden’s al-
All of these groups used the writing of Sayyid Qutb as the philosophical anchor for their fundamentalist doctrines. As Paul Berman has written, “The people in those groups were not stupid or lacking in education…
“These people are in possession of a powerful philosophy, which is Sayyid Qutb’s. They are in possession of a gigantic work of literature, which is his In the Shade of the Koran. These people feel that, by consulting their own doctrines, they can explain the unhappiness of the world…They feel that, in Qutb’s notion of sharia, they command the principles of a perfect society.
“These people believe that, in the entire world, they alone are preserving Islam from extinction. They feel they are benefiting the world, even if they are committing random massacres. They are certainly not worried about death. Qutb gave these people a reason to yearn for death.
“Wisdom, piety, death, and immortality are, in his vision of the world, the same. For a pious life is a life of struggle or jihad for Islam, and struggle means martyrdom.
“We may think: those are creepy ideas. And yes, the ideas are creepy. But there is, in Qutb’s presentation, a weird allure in those ideas.”
Sources
“Who’s Afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood?” Doug Saunders, Globe and Mail, February 5, 2011.
“Sayyid Qutb’s America.” Robert Siegel, National Public Radio, May 6, 2003.
“The Philosopher of Islamic Terror.” Paul Berman, New York Times, March 23, 2003.
“Reign of Egypt’s Mubarak Marked by Poverty, Corruption, Despair.” Michael Slackman, New York Times, January 31, 2011.
© Canada and the World, February 2011
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THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD
The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 by 
Hassan al-
He set the group up to carry out good works in the Islamic tradition and to oppose British rule in Egypt (The British had governed the country since 1882).
Hassan al-
He wanted Egypt to be governed under this stern branch of Islam, similar to what the Taliban later adopted in Afghanistan.
The Brotherhood quickly became a major political force in Egypt and its younger members pressed successfully for the creation of a military wing.
The leadership believed in non-
As it spread throughout the Middle East, the Brotherhood became increasingly associated with acts of violence, assassination, and terrorism.
By the late 1970s, the Brotherhood had firmly established itself as a leading power broker in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and Sudan. At the same time, it was playing important roles in Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Palestinian territories (where it changed into the terrorist group Hamas, and became the government of the Gaza Strip).
In Saudi Arabia, during the early 1970s, the Brotherhood was thriving. Many of its leading thinkers had fled Egypt and were teaching in Saudi universities. One student at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah was Osama bin Laden, a member of one of the country’s richest and most well connected families.
Osama bin Laden bumped into the Muslim Brotherhood during his time at university and was influenced by a number of radical Islamic professors, one of them Sayyid Qutb’s brother, Muhammad.
In the early 1980s, bin Laden took up the fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
He and his followers were helped by the Muslim Brotherhood and the U.S. spy organization, the Central Intelligence Agency.
They set up a support network based in Peshawar, Pakistan that would later become
al-
The public face of the Muslim Brotherhood today is still based in Egypt. The Egyptian Brotherhood officially renounced violence in the 1970s.
Most middle east watchers agree that the Muslim Brotherhood must have a role in any
post-
According to Paul Rogers, a professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University
of Bradford, England, the group is no longer the wild-
STRAYING
FROM THE PATH
Sayyid Qutb was as critical of Muslims who had strayed from the “true path of Islam”
as he was of non-
He said that all societies ruled by a non-
LEADERLESS UPRISING
The BBC’s Middle East Bureau Chief Paul Danahar reports from Egypt that the demonstrations of January and February 2011 appear to be a spontaneous uprising of the people. He writes (February 5, 2011) that the revolution is leaderless.
According to Danahar “…no doubt there is jostling going on behind the scenes for a role in a transitional government, but during a week of demonstrations, I haven’t heard anyone chant the name of any other politician but President Hosni Mubarak, and that was ‘Mubarak Go Now.’ ”
Writing in the Seattle Times, Michael Slackman points out that the grievances that caused Egyptians to raise a ruckus in the streets “are economic, social, historic and deeply personal. Egyptians…often speak of their dignity, which many said has been wounded by Mubarak’s monopoly on power…”
He adds that “The police are brutal. Elections are rigged. Corruption is rampant. Life gets more difficult for the masses, as the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer.”
Forty percent of the Egyptian population of 80 million lives on less than $2 a day, while, by some estimates, Hosni Mubarak and his family have assets worth $70 billion.
With Mubarak gone and a military council in control Patrick Martin writes in The Globe and Mail (February 12, 2011), “...it is worth remembering, noted a Western diplomat, that it was the army that appointed Mr. Mubarak in the first place...’All the people have done here is persuade the army that it’s time to change their choice of 29 years ago.’ ”
Whoever eventually takes over from Mubarak will face a monumental task. The first obstacle will be high expectations for immediate change that will be impossible to satisfy.
Mubarak’s Egypt in a place “where about half the population lives on $2 a day or less, and walled compounds with green lawns and swimming pools and names like Swan Lake spring up outside cities. It is a place where those with money have built a parallel world of private schools and exclusive clubs, leaving the rundown cities to the poor.”
Michael Slackman
New York Times
January 2011