The New Middle East Read Online Free PDF

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    Sayyid Qutb’s critique of Islamic societies and what he saw as their failure to follow the true path of Islam went well beyond the teachings of al-Banna or any other Islamic scholar of his era. Al-Banna wanted Egyptian society to be run according to traditional Islam. He thought some Muslims were bad Muslims and he sought to persuade them to move back to the core values of the faith.
    Qutb concluded that you were either his kind of Muslim or you weren’t a Muslim at all. Milestones , which was smuggled piecemeal out of jail, 49 was his manifesto for political Islam, and in it he declared that ‘all the existing so-called “Muslim” societies are jahili societies.’ 50 Jahili means ignorant or backward. This was the word used to describe the state of the pre-Islamic Arab world before God revealed the tenets of the Islamic faith to the Prophet Muhammad. According to Qutb:
     
The position of Islam in relation to all these jahili societies can be described in one sentence: it considers all these societies un-Islamic and illegal. Islam does not look at the labels or titles which these societies have adopted; they all have one thing in common, and that is that their way of life is not based on complete submission to God alone. 51
     
    He lumped together every nation and everyone living in them as being in a state of ignorance. ‘Such a society is to be counted among jahili societies, although it may proclaim belief in God and permit people to observe their devotion in mosques, churches and synagogues.’ And what should be done about these ignorant ‘backward societies’? ‘[P]hysical power and jihad’ should be used ‘for abolishing the organisation and authorities of the jahili system’. 52
    Qutb had stepped over the line that few Muslims care to cross. He had got into the business of ‘Takfir’. That is the word used when one Muslim accuses another of apostasy. Qutb gave future generations of violent extremist Sunni Muslim groups like al-Qaeda the right, in their own minds at least, to decide who was or was not a good Muslim, and the permission to wage war against the Muslims who failed to meet the extremists’ criteria. By definition these fringe fanatics were few and far between, and in the years that followed the publication of Milestones had very little impact on the world. But the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan drew them all together in one place where they formed alliances, then the Internet enabled them to stay in touch, find more recruits and spread their message of intolerance and hate.
    Sayyid Qutb was silenced on the gallows in the early hours of the morning on 29 August 1966, though his words still resonate among extremist jihadi groups today. He had been briefly released from prison and then rearrested for being involved in another plot to kill Nasser. His final words, spoken through the hood placed over his head, were the Islamic Profession of Faith: ‘There is no god but God, and Muhammad is His Messenger.’ 53
    His death under Nasser’s rule was to change the life of one fifteen-year-old boy who in turn would take the lives of many others. Al-Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri was living in one of Cairo’s then leafy southern suburbs. 54 He too would join the Brotherhood. Then, inspired by Qutb and by his anger over the execution, he helped form the militant Al-Jihad Group. ‘Sayyid Qutb’s call for loyalty to God’s oneness and to acknowledge God’s sole authority and sovereignty was the spark that ignited the Islamic revolution against the enemies of Islam at home and abroad. The bloody chapters of this revolution continue to unfold day after day,’ wrote al-Zawahiri while he was the deputy leader of al-Qaeda and presumed to be hiding in a cave complex in Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks. 55
    Nasser was the greatest foe the Muslim Brotherhood would face, because he had a vision for Arab society that competed with theirs. But when he suffered a heart attack in September