Qotb and citizenship
Al-Ahram Weekly
Sayed Qotb represents an extension of the thought of Hassan El-Banna. Both are from a similar branch of knowledge shaped by the teachings and implications of the divine revelation, and both belong to the same political framework: the Muslim Brotherhood organisation.
However, they differ in many aspects at the theoretical level and in their practices. El-Banna remained a preacher, spiritual guide and advocate of the universality of Islam. Qotb was a theorist and ideologue. He addressed the intellect in the modes of deductive logic, dialectics, and comparative analysis.
He had fluctuating relations with most political forces in Egypt in the period that followed the 1952 Revolution. The relationships began on good terms but then soured when he felt that he was unable to influence the new policies and ideological outlooks. This development eventually triggered transformations in his political thinking and behaviour, leading him to shift from social revolutionary political Islam to radical confrontational Islamism.
Sayed Qotb’s fundamentalism stemmed from a desperate need for the Salafi manhaj (methodology in matters of creed, behaviour, ways of life, etc). The manhaj is the foundation of the life of the Muslim nation. It has two cornerstones: belief in God and his Prophet and living in accordance with the Sunna (path) of the Prophet Mohammed.
It proceeds from the declaration of faith: “There is no god but God, and Mohamed is the Prophet of God.” Islam is not a “theory” that deals with abstract “hypotheses”. It is a manhaj (methodology) that deals with actual “reality”. It presumes that the Muslim community must, first, declare the creed: “There is no god but God and sovereignty belongs to God alone.” With this brief statement, Sayed Qotb expresses his vision of society as based on the concept of hakimiya (divine sovereignty).
Qotb’s attitude toward the political regime and contemporary society proceeds from this concept. He holds that society must be radically changed so that the rule of God can prevail. In Maalim fi Al-Tariq (Milestones), he writes: “No one can say of a law promulgated by God that ‘this is God’s law’ unless the rule of God is declared to prevail and unless the source of the authorities is God almighty, not ‘the people’, or ‘the political party’ or any human being.”
Qotb saw the political systems that existed in his time as remnants of the “crusader” invasion of Muslim countries in the 19th century, and as regimes belonging to the pre-Islamic jahiliya, or age of ignorance, because they did not establish the sovereignty of God. In fact, he held that these regimes attacked the divine authority by claiming sovereignty for themselves, in accordance with which they could sanction or prohibit whatever they pleased.
Qotb was calculated in his choice of terminology. He sought a means to deny authority to all but his own organisation, the Muslim Brotherhood, in a way that would find popular acceptance. Hakimiya, the term that stripped human beings of their own free and independent will, was guaranteed to resonate profoundly in a culture steeped in the beliefs and structures of Islamic civilisation.
Clearly, Qotb openly opposed all forms of modern democracy. But in attributing it to kind of contemporary jahiliya, he had hit upon a means to reject all other contemporary systems: socialism and its opposite, democracy and dictatorship. Moreover, it was a blanket rejection. The attribute jahili damned an entire political system or philosophy from its roots, regardless of its various branches, leaves and fruits.
In Qotb’s opinion, democracy did not work to unify society but rather laid the foundations for ideological differences. As he sought to unify society and the state in the framework of a theocratic ideology, he naturally rejected the notion of democratic plurality and political parties, the Wafd Party in particular.
In an article published by Rosa Al-Youssef magazine on 29 September 1952, he proclaimed: “These parties are unable to survive.” He appealed to youth to stay away from what he termed “the rusty cogs in the corrupt social apparatus.”
If some hold that Sayed Qotb, in Milestones, reached a peak of reactionary conservatism because of his sweeping condemnation of our society as jahili, they only describe half the picture. Not only was Qotb an ultra-reactionary, he was also an ultra-radical to which testify the pains he took to illustrate how to draw up the Islamist militant pamphlet.
In a work bearing the title “There is no god but God” he explains the need to divorce oneself from contemporary society with all its institutions, values and symbols. Accordingly, he describes the basic mission of the Brotherhood: “Our first mission is to change the reality of this society. Our mission: change this jahili reality from its foundations. This reality conflicts fundamentally with the Islamic methodology (manhaj) and with the Islamic concept.” Force is the means to implement change, according to this thinker and his disciples.
In Toward an Islamic Society, Qotb devotes a chapter to his perception of the nature of that society, with the purpose of proclaiming uniqueness and superiority over other faiths and sects. According to his views, the “people of the book” (Jews and Christians) are not entitled to political rights but solely to some civil rights that are largely restricted to personal status matters and other affairs particular to the religious community.
He also cautions Muslims against supporting these minorities, or even feeling a sense of having a common bond. He thus puts paid to any notion of citizenship in that society. Qotb sums up the nature of that society as follows: “It is a religious, godly society with a hereditary caliphate and surpasses all other societies.”
He is so confident of his beliefs that he predicts that this Islamic society is ultimately destined to bring peace and justice to the entire world. According to this view, there is no room in Qotb’s outlook for modern civil society. The society that Qotb envisions is a preordained culmination of human evolution. It follows that this is a society that insists on conformity and has no room for the culture of the acceptance of difference.
It is a view that, in fact, conflicts with Quranic strictures that sanction and uphold diversity, such as, “If God had so willed he would have made you a single nation” (Shura: 8) and, “They are still different” (Hud: 118).
Qotb’s views on the state are not inconsistent with his general philosophy and ideological approach. However, he does not dedicate a particular study to the concept of the state. Rather his conception of it unfolds in the course of his writings on the nature and features of government in Islam.
He writes: “The state in Islam is but the natural product of the group and its particular properties … and the group comprises the state and advances it toward the realisation of the Islamic methodology (manhaj) and its hegemony over individual and collective life.”
There is a specious logic at work here, an obfuscation of boundaries between different terms and concepts. It is axiomatic in political science that the state is larger than the group or community and, conversely, that the group or community are part of the whole (the state).
But here, Qotb is evidently identifying the state with the particular group striving to attain a certain end, namely the application of Islam and the imposition of the rule of the creed and the group’s perception of it over all matters of life. The concept is inherently at odds with the modern constitutional and legal concept of the state with its composite facets of government, territory, citizenry and sovereignty.
Qotb attests that theocracy — rule by clergymen — is not an acceptable form of government in Islam, as Islam does not confer on a group of people the right to represent the divine self. This flagrantly conflicts with his aforementioned views on Islamic society and the hereditary caliphate that governs it, views that confirm that the Qotbist ideal is based on theocratic rule.
As for the relationship between the ruler and the ruled, Qotb writes in his book, World Peace and Islam: “The system of government in Islam establishes the relationships between the governor and his subjects on the basis of peace, justice and tranquillity and on which foundation there can arise the sound and unshakable structure of social peace.”
One is struck by his choice of terminology and its connotations. The Arabic term rai literally means “shepherd” and raiya literally means “the flock of sheep being herded.” It is not difficult to understand how heresy is conceived in this framework. The heretic is clearly the person (or sheep) who turns to another human authority other than the authority (shepherd) who claims to be applying divine law.
In sum, Qotbist thought is quintessentially discriminatory on the basis of religious affiliation and does not recognise political plurality. It clearly blends politics, as a theory of government or mode for organising public affairs, with Sharia, as a legal code governing moral behaviour.
He also fails to differentiate between the general principles in Sharia (the constitution) and laws that require the application of complex and systematised legislative rules within the constitutional framework.
In general, Qotbist thought its riddled with theoretical problems at both the strategic and tactical levels of its application. Of particular concern is the absence of any concept of public authority, for according to his concept of hakimiya (divine sovereignty), on the basis of which he condemned the state, the regime and society as heretical, his notion of authority converges with a society whose individual members are stripped of all free and independent will and, thus, has the power to impose a comprehensive system that ordains every aspect of their lives.
It follows that the group imposing that system, in this totalitarian vision, has the right to use systematic violence in order to force society to bow to its will.
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