Make the Ummah Great Again!

On Sayyid Qutb, Voltaire & the Islamist Challenge

[Image: The most famous disciple of the teachings of Qutb]

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This fortnight is Anti-Zionism is Antisemitism fortnight, a collaboration between Nachum Kaplan’s Moral Clarity and Guerre and Shalom. The opening gambit in this exciting project is here. The “main event” (coming soon!) will be a polemical article entitled “Anti-Zionism is Antisemitism” to be exclusively published on the Moral Clarity Substack.

Today we learn about the Islamist roots of Muslim Anti-Zionism and how it is preventing any political resolution of the Middle Eastern conflict.

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The Godfather of Middle Eastern Chaos

Sayyid Qatb may be the most influential philosopher of our time. For although many may be ignorant of his name, none, surely, are ignorant of his effect. Equipped only with his writings, his brother Mohammed went forth to teach at a prestigious Saudi university. Then, inspired and radicalized, one notorious student went on to commit the crime of the century. His name? Osama Bin Laden. Yet his teachings spread far beyond Sunni realms. The Ayatollah Khomenei, Shia though he may have been, took great succor from the intellectual poisoned well of Qutb. Behold! It was the basis of the Iranian Islamic Revolution. So on what we pray may be the eve of that regime’s collapse, let us seek to expose the rot from which it sprung forth. For Qutbism is not only a challenge in Iran, Saudi Arabia and throughout the Islamic world. It poses, in my submission, a mortal threat to the entire British and European social contract.

Who was Sayyid Qatb? He was a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood and an influential Egyptian, Islamist intellectual. Many of his 24 books were outlawed by the Egyptian state and having been accused of (two) assassination attempts on his Egyptian, pan-Arabist leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, he was imprisoned and ultimately executed in 1966. But though his body decomposed in the bowels of the Earth, his soul failed to ascend into the Islamist heaven above. Instead it influenced a whole generation of Egyptian high society with politicians, intellectuals and literary figures being radicalized by his words. School children and university students were taught from a curriculum that showcased his writings and thus a whole new generation became versed in Islamist ideology. We too must now undergo a similar education in order to understand the threat we face.

Islamists , Marxists and approaches to “Oppression”

It should not surprise the reader to learn that this article will be overwhelmingly negative towards the content of Qatb’s world view, with a particular emphasis on his iconic work Ma'alim fi al-Tariq (Milestones). Nonetheless, let us begin with a potential positive and highlight the apparently beneficent objective of Qatb’s ideology. Although he would go on to incite martyrdom and murder in the name of Islam, his goal was not death per se. In many ways, he sought precisely that which we all seek, from the Marxist to the English liberal. He sought freedom: freedom from oppression, freedom from tyranny and most emphasized of all, freedom from slavery.

In echoes of the Communist Manifesto, which called on the workers to liberate themselves from their chains, Qutb called on the Islamist believer to do likewise. In echoes of the Exodus, where the Israelite eved (slave/servant) was delivered from human oppression so as to become an eved of God in the wilderness, so Qutb called on the true follower of Islam to liberate themselves from their human masters. Only then may they enjoy true freedom under the sovereignty of God. Even in England, where Voltaire praises the diverse mixing of religions in the marketplace and waxes lyrical about the toleration of the State towards non-Anglican denominations, he does so in the name of liberty. His contempt for the nature of tyrannical human government is more than evident enough.

Thus understood, Qatb’s objective is no radical departure from those religious and non-religious ideologies that have flourished in foreign realms. The liberation of mankind from chains is a universal ideal it seems. Indeed, despite his specific critique of communist societies in the book’s introduction, Milestones can read at times as a theist’s adaption of Marxist ideology and not only in terms of its parroting of the word “oppression”.

In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels speak of the gradual reduction of classes over time. In the feudal era, many competing interests strove together in order to satisfy their group interest, yet by the emergence of Capitalism and Industrial Revolution, society was left with just two significant rival classes: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. This was a positive development on the road to communism, they affirmed, yet in the need to agglomerate the peasantry in towns and educate them at least to a minor degree, the capitalists had created a rod for their own back. Ultimately, it was claimed, the workers would rise up in revolution and after a undetermined period of proletariat dictatorship, a single communist class would emerge united in harmony and freed from slavery. Qatb’s Islam appears as just one more attempt, certainly just as dangerous, to subsume humanity in one equal, international class where all “freely submit” to a determined order.

When reading Milestones, therefore, one should resist the temptation to equate Islamism with wider Islamic culture or indeed religion in general. For perhaps its most potent frenemy is the godless, secular, yet borderless Marxism. In both cases, we see an ideology directly opposed to the nation and any identity forged in language, culture, place or ethnicity. In both cases, we see a restrictive, universalist, violent internationalism proposed as a cure to slavery and oppression.

[Image: Followers of Sayyid Qutb]

The Islamist Belief System

The precise contours of the “freedom” proposed by Qutb are, by this point, familiar to all. The acceptance of the revelation of the Quran as an act of pure religious faith and not as a journey of intellectual discovery. The complete adherence to its teachings without question or reflection. The refusal to admit a secular sphere separate from the True Faith. The conviction that Islam is all-encompassing and applicable to every domain of life. The judgment that all non-Islamic sources and wisdom are devoid of value and insofar as previous Muslim scholars and philosophers have attempted to integrate Islam within a wider pool of knowledge, they have done so in sinful error.

According to Qutb, the Islamic world has fallen into decay through its mixing with invalid sources of wisdom. (The symmetry with the Nazi idea of racial intermingling is worryingly plain). To purify the Ummah - and the world along with it - it is necessary to return to the values of the first Islamic generation. Islam must no longer be viewed as a culture, philosophy or source of inspiration for a particular segment of the world's population; rather it must return to seeing itself as the one universal faith which contains the sole and unique truth within the bounds of its holy scriptures.

Qatb reaffirms the division of the world into a House of Peace and a House of War with a third intermediate grouping being designated for the People of the Book, which is to say Christians and Jews. Unlike the heretic polytheists who must be fought until they submit to Islam, the fellow monotheists of the world have a choice: accept the supremacy of Islam and pay a tribute tax, else face the consequences.

Milestones, as the English title suggests, does not see the process as either quick nor easy. It will take time. It is a process that must be achieved methodically; step by step. When surrounded by a majority of non-believers, the true Muslim may need to restrain themselves, just as in the days of the first Muslims of Mecca. But where they can, they fight to win; in the first place against those judged as rejecters of monotheism and where necessary, against those individuals of the Book who refuse to accept the supremacy of the one true faith.

So far has the Ummah fallen since those days when it conquered the world that it has become necessary to lead the “defensive” charge with a “vanguard”. Those who fear nothing and have left worry at the door, so convinced are they by the truth of the Message. When faced with “poverty, difficulty, frustration, torment” and untold setbacks, the Islamist fighter will not be downhearted. Instead, they will continue in their quest for “human freedom from oppression” under a vanilla, all-encompassing, international and universal submission to the Truth. It will be left to the reader to decide whether such a remedy does indeed constitute freedom.

[Image: Sayyid Qutb (right), the godfather of today’s Islamist terror.]

Martyrdom and the Meaning of Life

Qutb specifically rejects the idea that the purpose of life is utilitarian; that we must seek out pleasure or defend against pain. Neither does it receive meaning from the search for knowledge. Rather, in Qutb’s most alarming conception, life must be properly characterized as a “struggle between beliefs - whether unbelief or faith, whether Jahiliyyah or Islam”. He correctly notes that if the struggle were political or economic or racial, “ its settlement would be easy”, but conceived as a struggle between faiths, no peace is possible without submission. It is in this notorious paragraph that we finally understand the century-long failure to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Political issues can be resolved ‘easily’, as can those involving racial injustice, but those founded on fundamentalistic faith are unavoidably intractable.

Qutb’s route to his Islamist goals run through martyrdom. This prescription is clearly outlined for the reader in chapter 12 (entitled “This is the Road”) and its effectiveness is claimed to stem from the liberation of the martyr from the “worship of this life”. Nothing, not even torture, will have the power to deter the vanguard from their bloody mission. In a particularly disturbing passage, Qutb even references with approval the martyrdom of children:

The messenger of God-peace be upon Him-said: “ When a certain person's child dies, God asks the angels: Did you take away the soul of My servant’s child? They say: Yes. Then He says: Did you take away the apple of My eye? They say: Yes. Then He says: What did My servant say? They say He praised You and said, ‘Indeed we belong to God and to Him we will return’. Then He says: Build a house for My servant in the Garden and call it the House of Praise”. (Tirmidhi)

Once again, we see the resonances of this philosophy in today's events. Hamas are perfectly willing to see the death of their children, even encourage such death, in the “sure” knowledge that the young departed will soon be entering the Garden.

Death is to be celebrated.

Death must triumph over life so that oppression may cease from the Earth. In his own words, “This world is not a place of reward”.

Islam, Islamism and the Vanguard

I have been very careful through this recounting of Qutb’s Islamism - a death cult’s manifesto in the fine sentence construction of a well-read academic - to never conflate the subject term with the faith of Islam. I do not do so out of political correctness, but rather because that is the distinction that Qutb himself implies. To be sure, what Qutb calls Islam and I call Islamism is what the former views as the one “True Islam”, but in having to emphasize the purity of his account, the author necessarily implies that the (vast) majority of Muslims, who are not in the vanguard, have a different interpretation of their faith. It is not for me as a Non-Muslim to declare what is, in fact, the “correct interpretation”, merely that there are (bloody) disputes on this point between Qutb’s followers and those who fall outside the Islamist tent.

Qutb’s camp clearly constituted the overwhelming minority in 1966, else what need did he have to speak of a vanguard? Indeed, what need did he have to speak of a step-by-step process at all? It is Qutb’s very frustration that the Muslims of his day were contaminated by outside influences that inspired him to produce this controversial work in the first place. He viewed the descent from the supposed purity of early Islam as the reason for the economic and social decay of the Muslim world; its appeal, the desire to “Make the Ummah Great Again”, is precisely that which encouraged Osama Bin-Laden, the Ayatollah Khomenei and a raft of well-heeled, supposed intellectuals to follow his lead. Either Islam is true and we must reform backwards to recover our greatness; else Islam is false and we have been rejected by God. We cannot permit the latter. Thus we must fight.

The Freedom of England

The difference between Qutb’s freedom and Anglo-freedom could not be more stark. When contrasting the intellectual decay of Catholic France with the economic progress of Anglican England, Voltaire heartily endorsed the tolerance of the latter as the key to its success. One can only guess at with what contempt he would view Qutb’s Islamism, yet one can be sure of his prescription: if the Muslim World were to truly seek economic, intellectual and political progress - if it were to genuinely seek freedom from oppression on Earth - then it must follow the route of 18th Century England: It must liberate the market, open up its trade routes and accept the concomitant and peaceful mixing of religions.

It is noted with great joy that the United Arab Emirates (in particular) has belatedly become aware of the interrelationship between trade and peace; the interrelationship between tolerating the Quakers and achieving greatness. Perhaps, who knows, those countries will soon be able to proudly trumpet that which Voltaire said of England in his famous letter:

“Take a view of the Royal Exchange in London, a place more venerable than many courts of justice, where the representatives of all nations meet for the benefit of mankind. There the Jew, the Mahometan, and the Christian transact together, as though they all professed the same religion, and give the name of infidel to none but bankrupts. There the Presbyterian confides in the Anabaptist, and the Churchman depends on the Quaker’s word.”

He continued:

“If one religion only were allowed in England, the Government would very possibly become arbitrary; if there were but two, the people would cut one another’s throats; but as there are such a multitude, they all live happy and in peace.”

In those old-English days, the Mahometan - the Muslim - transacted with those of all faiths.

In those old-English days, the Mahometan found wealth with the Jew in commerce.

In those old-English days, the Mahometan found peace with the Jew in trade.

In those old-English days, the Mahometan found peace and happiness with all when transacting in the presence of complete religious diversity.

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Perhaps that’s the secret. Perhaps that’s why the Muslim world has declined. The route to Islamic recovery is not freedom from oppression through mass oppression. It is the embrace of peace through religious diversity underpinned by freedom of trade.

Yet change is coming. The UAE is in the vanguard, the Saudis are following close behind and Qutb’s Iranian, Islamist tyranny may soon be breathing its last.

In those days to come, the Muslim world will become great again and we will all cheer its advance.

In those days to come, the incompatible Islamism that threatens the stability of European society will be no more. It will be replaced with a fearless return to 18th Century Anglo-freedom where the Jew, Muslim and Christian dwell in peace.

May it soon come and in our days.

Insha’allah.

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You may also be interested in Alan Mairson’s article on the same topic released today, It relates to an interview he had with Anwar al-Awlaki in his capacity as editor of the National Geographic magazine post 9/11.

My email chat with Anwar al-Awlaki (before he was assassinated, of course)