RELIGIOSCOPE
- Before we deal with specific thinkers of the Islamic resurgence,
some clarifications regarding the use of descriptive labels.
Islamism? Islamic resurgence?
Islamic fundamentalism? Islamic revival?
Which labels do you consider appropriate, which ones are
not, which ones are the most adequate to describe the whole
of these movements?
IA-R
- In my book I have used the term Islamic revivalism, not
Islamic fundamentalism, or Islamic resurgence, because if
one goes back to the19th century, to the origins
of Islamic resurgence, we find it was much wider, broader
than political resurgence. As a matter of fact, many Muslims
in the 19th century did not call for the implementation
of the sharia but they wanted to revive Islamic values
and Islamic ways of life, especially those that have been
challenged by colonial presence in the Muslim world, what
is often referred to as modernity.
But
it was not modernity pure and simple. It was the imposition
of Western ideas through a well-founded political and economic
system of domination on the Muslim world. And that’s why there
was a broad reaction by Muslim institutions, Muslim states
and Muslim intelligentsia to that system of domination. For
example that process of Islamic response, at the level of
the State in the Ottoman Empire, was called tanzimat,
reorganization. Tanzimat means that modernization of
Turkish-Ottoman society, which did not stop the disintegration
of the empire, because it disintegrated after World War I.
Therefore, I would use the term Islamic revival, or Islamic
resurgence.
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RELIGIOSCOPE
- To a lesser extent, we might describe the spread of Islamic
resurgence as a consequence of the failure of Arab
nationalism. But since Islamic resurgence was not confined
to the Arab world, what do you see as the more general causes
of the surge of Islamic resurgence. Is it basically the
encounter with modernity?
IA-R
- I think one has to distinguish between three different phases
of Islamic resurgence.
1)
The first one is what I would call pre-colonial, like the
Wahhabi movement in Arabia, that did not react to foreign
European ideas. It was an internal movement and pre-colonial
in this sense.
2)
And then there is the second Islamic resurgence, the colonial
phase, which began roughly at the beginning of the 19th
century until around the middle of the 20th century
and responded to different forms of European domination in
the Muslim world. The Muslim Brotherhood movement, originating
in Egypt, is one major example. The second example, the Jamaat-e-Islami
of Pakistan, was established by Mawdudi in 1941-42, before
the partition of India and Pakistan. So, these are two broad,
major Islamic organizations that emerged in the context of
the colonial presence.
3)
Now other Islamic movements emerged after the post-colonial
ones. Let’s say the Taliban is a post-colonial one. The Egyptian
Jihad is a post-colonial one. So, therefore, one can distinguish,
as I said, between the pre-colonial, colonial, post-colonial
phases.
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RELIGIOSCOPE
- Can we consider the abolition of the Califate after the
fall of the Ottoman empire as a key event – not merely the
abolition of the Califate, but some passages of your book
seem to imply clearly that the secularizing enterprise of
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was perceived by contemporary Muslim
thinkers in the Arab world as ominous, a warning sign of
things to come?
IA-R
- Yes, there is no doubt that the disintegration of the Ottoman
state – officially in 1923 – has had major consequences on
Islamic revival, because when Muslim revivalists look at the
Ottoman Empire, although it was weak and corrupt, it was a
symbol of Islamic unity, not just political unity but theological
unity. But there has been a feeling that, since 1924, that
unity has disappeared, the Muslim world has had no centre,
so to speak. And that, of course, has ushered us into the
era of the nation-states in the Muslim world, that are not
unified, but as a matter of fact there are different conflicts
between them. So, this is one major reason. You know the response
of the Muslims in India in the 1910s was to create the Al-Khilafa
movement. They collected donations and sent them to Turkey
as a means to preserve the integrity of the Ottoman state.
That was popular, both popular and organisational in the sense
that Muslims are scared of the idea of the loss of the Khilafat.
There is one Islamic party, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, that speaks now
in the name of Khilafat, whose major intention has been to
revive the Khilafat, which I doubt will be revived although
Hiz-ut-Tahrir are pretty vocal people. They are a small minority,
but they are pretty vocal in different cities in Europe.
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RELIGIOSCOPE
- In the last chapter of your book, you describe one of
the thinkers of contempory Islam as "post-Qutbian".
So actually Qutb emerges in your book in a pivotal role
Can we really say that the work of Qutb represents a turning
point in contemporary Islamic resurgence and why?
IA-R
- I think Qutb is one of the most significant thinkers in
modern and contemporary Arab Islamic resurgence Sometimes,
he is more important than Hassan al Banna, if not often, although
Hassan al Banna was the founder of the movement. Sayyid Qutb
was not. Initially Sayyid Qutb was a secular man of letters
in Egypt, before he converted fully to Islamic ideas in the
1940s.
But
Qutb had a unique personality. First he spent quite a large
number of years of his life in prison. And he wrote a large
portion of his writings, especially the exegesis of the Quran,
while he was in prison. And that is why his writings became
the ideological cornerstone of many other revivalist movements
emerging in the Arab and Muslim world after the 1960s, after
he was executed. The fact that he was executed means that
he has been made a martyr in the eyes of all these many people.
So Qutb has given that inspiration to so many people.
Nowadays
in the Arab world, there are a number of islamic thinkers,
but I think one major Islamic thinker, who is exerting so
much power on the young Arab intelligentsia, is a Lebanese
Shiite, Mohammad Husayn Fadlallah. And I have written a whole
chapter on him. Mohammed Husayn Fadlallah seems to continue
the legacy of Sayyid Qutb in so many different ways. He does
not advocate violence, but he is very critical of Israel and
the United States. And you may have read the press report
about him a few weeks ago, where he condemned the assault
on the USA. But he also condemned the American attack in Afghanistan,
because that would not be very helpful.
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RELIGIOSCOPE
- In your book you mentioned an author, a man called Nadwi,
an Indian by birth, whose book was introduced in the Arabic
translation by Sayyid Qutb in 1951. This is interesting:
upon that Muslim-Arab resurgence, there were also influences
from Muslim thinkers outside the Arab world. Were those
people in India and in Egypt in touch with each other?
IA-R
- The two most famous people from South Asia who influenced
Arabs have been Nadwi and Mawdudi. These two people have been
very influential. But Nadwi, who died only two years ago at
avery old age, is somewhat different from Mawdudi. Nadwi refused
to go to Pakistan after partition, whereas Mawdudi went. So
that is one major difference Both of them, of course have
called for the implementation of the sharia and for the revival
of justice in Islamic society. Yes, these people have had
a major impact on the young Arab intelligentsia.
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RELIGIOSCOPE
- Qutb could not have become what he became without the
Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood was born in Egypt, but
very soon spread beyond Egypt, which indicates that it was
answering not just questions widespread among Egyptian intellectuals,
but also in the Arab world generally. Could you briefly
summarize how the Muslim Brotherhood spread outside of Egypt
already before the Second World War?
IA-R
- That is a very interesting question. Let me just say Qutb
joined the movement at the end of the 1940s. No one exactly
knows the date when he joined the movement, but my feeling
is that he did after the assassination of Hassan al-Banna,
the founder of the movement. This is a major factor to have
in mind. But the second major factor that led perhaps to an
increase in the charisma of Sayyid Qutb is the Nasserite
revolution of 1952, because now, after 1952, we are dealing
with a fundamentally different situation than had been current
in Egypt before that time. And Qutb did not adjust himself
fully. Initially the Ikhwan assumed or thought that the young
officers would take an Islamic road, an Islamic path. But
they were disappointed a few years later, because that was
not the case.
In terms
of the spread of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, I think
it began in the 1940s and the 1950s. In the Arab world, it
was spread mainly by different Arab Muslim students who had
gone to Cairo to study, especially at Al-Azhar, and who had
come in contact with the different Muslim Brothers. Egypt
its a major Arab country. It’s the major intellectual Arab
country. So when you are an Arab born in Syria, in Palestine
or Morocco and you go to Egypt, you come in touch with different
intellectual currents in Egypt. If you are a Muslim or of
Islamic leaning, you would come in touch personally with the
leaders of the movement. Then these people went back. This
was very clear in terms of the Sudan (Hassan al-Turabi) or
in terms of Syria with Yusuf al-Sibai’, the founder of the
Ikhwan in Syria. He had studied in Egypt in the 1940s. In
addition we should not forget that the Ikhwan sent an army
regiment to fight against Zionists in Palestine. So all these
factors led to the promotion of the Ikhwan’s ideas.
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RELIGIOSCOPE
- The key person in the early Muslim Brotherhood was Hassan
al-Banna. What was most important with him was a system
of ideas which he developed, much more than his political
activities. Could you please tell us more about that system
of ideas which Hassan al-Banna introduced and which had
not been present before him?
IA-R
- If you look at his own writings, he is a very interesting
man. Richard Mitchell had written a book on Hassan al-Banna,
but I think we still need a whole book devoted to Hassan al-Banna
himself, about his own life, education, background, ideas,
and so on and so forth.
Hassan al-Banna basically was from the countryside. He had
been very much influenced by Sufi ideas. Then later on, when
he went to Ismailia and Cairo, he began to be influenced by
the ideas of such people as Muhammad Abduh, Jamal al-Din Al-Afghani,
Rashid Rida. So in the 1930s he was trying to create a synthesis
of all these ideas in his own system. So he was saying, “We
are a Sufi brotherhood, but we are a disciplined organisation
as well. We are an intellectual movement that teaches to reform
Islam.” Although he did not say that clearly, he had assumed
that all intellectual leaders of Islamic reform in the 19th
century, especially Abduh, Afghani and Rida, had failed to
create mass-oriented movements. They were speaking wonderful
ideas but they did not put these ideas to a test. His function
was to embody all of these ideas in a mass-oriented movement
that would create a major power in Egyptian society. And this
is one reason he was murdered by the Egyptian secret police,
because the Egyptian state had become aware of the kind of
threat he was posing to the monarchy in Egypt in the late
1940s.
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RELIGIOSCOPE
- You mentioned in the career of Hassan al-Banna the importance
of Sufism for him. Today, however, Islamic revivalist groups
are usually quite opposed to Sufism. Is that a kind of perception
from outside?
IA-R
- Many of them are, although this was not the case in the
career of Hassan al-Banna. But someone like Muhammad Abduh
was anti-Sufi in his pronouncements. But most of the leaders
of Islamic resurgence have come from urban centres, from the
cities where there is no association with Sufi ideas, and
they have looked down on Sufi ideas as a perversion of Islamic
ideas.
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RELIGIOSCOPE
- In the work of Hassan al-Banna as well as the works of
later Muslim modern thinkers, there is a criticism not just
of colonialism, of Western secularism, but apparently of
Christianity too, which is understandable due to the fact
that missionary enterprises were quite often mingled with
colonial enterprises. You mentioned that Hassan al-Banna
also observed that the Egyptian Coptic community was an
indigenous community, not compromised with Western Christian
imperialism. Could you please elaborate and tell us how
later Islamist thinkers as well dealt with the reality of
Eastern Christianity?
IA-R
- Hassan al-Banna was very critical of Westernized ideas,
especially at the level of education and philosophy. He was
not open to accept these ideas, because of their corrupting
presence. But he was not critical of the Coptic community.
On the contrary, he called for dialogue. But that was normal
in the Egyptian political environment in the 1930s and the
1940s. We must not forget the role of the Wafd party and Sa’d
Zaghloul in cementing relations between Copts and Muslims
in the face of the British.
By
and large, there has to be a research in terms of the position
of the different Islamic movements throughout the Arab world
on the Christian community in the Middle East. The Muslim
Brotherhood has said that Christians are our brothers. We
must dialogue with them. This is very clear. And most conspicuous
in the ideas and practice of Sheikh Mohammed Husayn Fadlallah
in Lebanon: he always has meetings with the bishops and different
religious leaders in Lebanon. He has said several times that
"it is not our intention to create an Iislamic state,
because we live in Lebanon, where we have a large Christian
community". It is not fair to create an Islamic state
or to implement the sharia. "But we have to create a
pluralistic Lebanese state, where religions are respected
as religions." So that is a new discourse that has to
be analyzed further – and it has not been analyzed in a major
way, as of yet.
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RELIGIOSCOPE
- Your book explains in detail how Qutb developed a radical
Islamic agenda even before becoming a member of the Brotherhood.
Of course, you described his intellectual route in great
detail in your book, but could you summarize in a few words
the main phases of Qutb’s biography?
IA-R
- Basically, in the 1930s Qutb, a man of letters, was very
much influenced by two major personalities, Taha Hussain
and Al-Aqqad . Although they wrote about Islamic
themes, they had not come from the ranks of Islamic reform
so to speak. In the 1940s or so, Sayyid Qutb began to be more
and more aware of the importance of the Quran in the Islamic
life. So he began to take the Quran as the only document,
only criteria of analysis and truth. He said in his exegesis
“I spent thirty or forty years of my life, wasting my life,
studying European philosophy before I turned back to the Quran
and understood the secrets of the Quran.” So there was a major
shift in his career, his intellectual life, from a secular
man of letters to a religious person.
Then
at the end of the 1940s, there was another shift. He began
to apply his own Islamic theology of the Quran to social issues
in Egyptian society. But somebody else, Sheikh Mohammad al-Ghazali,
who in 1945 wrote a major book on Islam and economic justice
that influenced the thought of Sayyid Qutb, had begun this.
And that thought was very clear in his book, Social Justice
in Islam.
Then
there was another shift, especially after 1952, when the Egyptian
revolution took place. What position should we take as Muslim
Brothers vis-à-vis the Egyptian revolution? It was hoped that
the young Egyptian officers would accept to implement Islam,
but that was not the case. And that led to the imprisonment
of Sayyid Qutb and later on his execution in 1966.
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RELIGIOSCOPE
- In the Muslim Brotherhood, what was his organizational
position?
IA-R
- He was in charge of different publications by the Ikhwan
and he was seen to be the top ideologue of the Ikhwan.
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RELIGIOSCOPE
- Qutb advocated what could be described as a third way,
neither communism nor capitalism. If we understand him correctly,
what shocked him first in both instances were the basic
materialistic premises in both capitalism and communism.
Those are materialistic worldviews.
IA-R
- Of course, he talks about this, but he is not the only one
who talks about it in modern Islamic thought. He talks about
the Islamic system and its characteristics. You feel in speaking
about the Islamic system, he was speaking about an ideal Islamic
system that was not practiced anywhere in the world at least
at that time. But that was his hope that some day the Muslims
would be able to implement the ideal Islamic system that would
achieve a balance between materialism and spirituality, between
this life and the after-life.
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RELIGIOSCOPE
- Qutb was not only aware of the West from reading books,
but he also had a direct experience of the West. He studied
in America in 1949 and 50. Do we know more about his experiences
during this time?
IA-R
- He wrote a book about his life in America, that I was not
able to find, because it became banned in Egypt. But somebody
wrote a dissertation with long quotations from that book He
came to study English in Maryland. He was in his forties when
he came here, a mature man, a well-known man of letters in
the Egyptian society.
We
still do not know about his reaction to American society.
I remember one day he went to a church and he discovered that
people in church played music and even conducted dances. This
was very much disliked by him. He began to feel bad for Christianity,
that Christianity has become material, but above all Christianity
has become highly secularised and corrupted by these elements.
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RELIGIOSCOPE
- Qutb was also an avid reader as you observed. It seems
however that you think the influence of other authors was
not as strong as a number of scholars claim. You consider
that the main influences upon him were his reading of the
Quran and the historic situation in Egypt.
IA-R
- Yes. After the 1940s. But before that he had been influenced
by a great number of authors. Even after the 1940s, this French
medical doctor, Alexis Carrel, influenced him.
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RELIGIOSCOPE
- In the eyes of Qutb, the foundation of the State must
be identical to that of religion, and of course this would
be to most Western secularists anathema. Is there a way
to explain to Western secularists that Islamic movements,
founded upon such ideas, however should be entitled to free
space in the political arena of Muslim countries? How do
Muslim Islamic thinkers deal today with that issue, to reconcile
the pluralist political system with the Islamic foundations
of the state?
IA-R
- Unfortunately in some Arab and Muslim countries, the Islamic
movement has not been allowed to function in a democratic
atmosphere, because there is simply a lack of that democratic
atmosphere. One prime example is Algeria. Another is Turkey.
This has led to a collision, especially in the Algerian case,
between the Islamist forces and the government or the army.
We see more and more the space of civil society is disappearing
from many Muslim countries, whereby some of these people resort
to violence as their only option. I think we should work on
restoring civil liberties and democratic space in the Arab
and Muslim world. I think the Islamic movements have to be
allowed to function normally in those societies. If the people
want to elect an Islamic movement, why not? Just put them
in power. If they fail, then the people will decide. They
would make up their minds. Very often they would fail, because
many of them do not have the experience of leading a sophisticated
state or a big country. But they must be allowed to be part
of the political process.
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RELIGIOSCOPE
- A key word in Qutb’s works is aqidah. Would you
please explain the meaning of the word aqidah?
IA-R
- You know aqidah is not a new term in Islam. It simply
means Islamic doctrine, Islamic ideas, belief in God. Qutb
gave it a new, dynamic character. Aqidah is that ideological
spiritual bond that cements the young Muslim forces in a highly
changing society. Aqidah would give you stability,
fixity, form as well as power to withstand all the different
changes around you. And that is why I say Qutb was speaking
about this marriage, this meshing between aqidah and
youngster, pioneers who would be the hope in building a new
Islamic society. He talks a lot about the characteristics
of the aqidah, but he goes back to the early Islam,
especially to the Medina phase of Islam, when Muslims were
still young in their religion but they were able to withstand
different changes in Arabic society at that time.
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RELIGIOSCOPE
- Another key concept in Qutb’s work is the concept of jahiliyya.
Could you please explain its traditional meaning and the
meaning Qutb gives to it?
IA-R
- Jahiliyya is a term used by the Quran for describing
the pre-Islamic conditions in Arabia. Roughly, it means ignorance
or the phase of ignorance. Islam was supposed to supplant
all the different traditions, practices, and ideas of jahiliyya
with a new Islamic system that is far different from jahiliyya.
Qutb, especially when he was in prison, used the term jahiliyya
to refer to the Muslim world in the 20th century,
that refused to implement the sharia or establish an Islamic
state. That was full of jahiliyya according to him.
But it seems to me that he did that under extreme circumstances,
and this is the part the Jihad people in prison picked that
up in the 1960s and the 1970s, and that became a dominant
part of the Islamist discourse especially, in Egypt in the
1970s, 1980s. Many of these people who had that kind of discourse
went to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviets, and now
they are a part of the Qaeda. Somebody like Qutb must have
had a major impact on somebody like Bin Laden, for example,
or Ayman al-Zawahri, or others.
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RELIGIOSCOPE
- Continuing on that line, we see the rather pessimistic
conclusions of Qutb about the current state of the Muslim
world. Do you see in Qutb’s works some millenarian dimensions,
the idea of endtimes? It seems so pessimistic it could easily
lead to an apocalyptic thinking.
IA-R
- No, I could not see that in his thought. He was still hoping
a new Muslim generation would arise and rebuild the Islamic
world and Islamic state. Until the end of his life, he believed
in the power of the young Muslim pioneers and intelligentsia,
a power that would be cemented by aqidah or doctrine
in the revival of Islam. He did still believe in that all
the way to the end.
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RELIGIOSCOPE
- You have described Qutb’s influence upon radical Islam
already, but can we elaborate briefly about his influence
today for instance even upon Western Muslims? I see his
books published in Western countries. How do you think that
Qutb’s thinking can apply to conditions of Muslims living
in the West?
IA-R
- Let me just say Qutb has been translated, not too widely
into English but into different Islamic languages. For example
his major book, The Battle between Islam and Capitalism,
has not been translated into English. The young Muslims who
are born in the Western environment are very much impressed
by Sayyid Qutb. Students in my classes find him to be very
relevant in their Western environment. So he must still exert
a major impact on the minds of the young Muslims in Europe
as well as the States.
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RELIGIOSCOPE
- Regarding his influence outside the Muslim Arab world,
what can we say about it?
IA-R
- He is very influential in South Asia and South East Asia,
but mostly in Indonesia where there is a large Muslim party
by the name of Al-Ikhwan, who have, I heard, two million followers,
and Qutb is their major ideologue still.
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RELIGIOSCOPE
- And the name Al-Ikhwan doesn’t relate them to the Muslim
Brotherhood?
IA-R
- It’s an offshoot of the Egyptian Ikhwan.
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RELIGIOSCOPE
- And within the Brotherhood today, how far is Qutb being
read, or is he seen by some people with some distance?
IA-R
- I would like to equate Qutb to Malcolm X and Hassan al-Banna
to Elijah Muhammad. Many people speak about the tradition
of Elijah Muhammad while reading Malcolm X or listening to
his tapes, in the same vein that many people speak of tradition
of Hassan al-Banna while listening to the ideas of Sayyid
Qutb.
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