The Roots of Violence Must Be Sought in Social Structures, Not Ideas

In my view, with a sociological approach to explaining violence and takfir in the works of Sayyid Qutb, one must pay attention to the objective reasons for violence in these societies and to the sociological and de-essentializing reasons why thought turns to violence. The violence that Sayyid Qutb puts on paper is the product of the colonial, despotic, and class structures of society, and he reveals the hidden violence. Today we also see overt violence, but we must also pay attention to hidden violence.

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Sara Shariati at the Conference on Religious Violence and Takfir with Regard to the Thoughts of Sayyid Qutb

Qutb versus Qutbism

In recent years, with the growth of extremist and takfiri currents, some have simply sought to find connections between the actions and speech of these groups and Muslim thinkers. They claim, for example, that the naked violence of Salafi groups can be traced in the works of thinkers such as Sayyid Jamal, Muhammad Abduh, Sayyid Qutb, etc., and with this judgment, they discredit these thinkers and those who strive in the path of their questions. Of course, one cannot deem a thought indifferent to violence or tolerance, but Sara Shariati believes that the main sources of violence must be sought elsewhere; these sources must be sought in unequal social structures, foreign colonialism, and domestic despotism. In the Kamal Hall of the Faculty of Literature and Humanities at the University of Tehran, Sara Shariati considers Sayyid Qutb's thought to be the product of a process of continuous radicalization rooted in society. For this reason, she recommends that instead of constantly emphasizing blaming this thinker or that thought, it is better to return to society to dry up the roots of violence. In this conference, which was held as part of the series of meetings by the Center for Culture and Thought of the Academic Jihad, she undertook a sociological rereading of the text of Milestones within the political, social, economic, and cultural context of Sayyid Qutb's life, which is reviewed below: Takfir and violence are concepts that are apparently attributed to Sayyid Qutb today, and when Qutbism is spoken of, it apparently refers to takfiri currents. However, the advantage of academic work over the world of politics and the press is that it emphasizes precision, and any precision brings complexity. Consequently, from an academic perspective, one might not easily attribute violence to Sayyid Qutb, and different interpretations can be derived from his various works, resulting in a kind of complexity, confusion, and disarray. It is precisely from this complexity and disarray that thought and truth emerge. Roger Bastide says: Truth is always in the "chiaroscuro." Thought is not monolithic and uniform, and as a result, when I speak of violence in Sayyid Qutb, I mean the later Sayyid Qutb in the book Milestones from 1960, and overall, one cannot speak of a single, uniform Sayyid Qutb. Our goal here, in the words of Pascal that Bourdieu always emphasized in his classes, is: Do not laugh, do not lament, do not mock, only and solely understand. The question of the current discussion is: if there are traces of violent thought in Sayyid Qutb, what are its roots? Are its roots in the doctrines or in the political, economic, social, and cultural conditions; while noting that my approach to the discussion is sociological, with all the benefits and problems that this approach entails. With this approach, the simple image of Sayyid Qutb as a fundamentalist theorist of violence is shattered. Sayyid Qutb is a more complex personality than these clichés, and like many Muslim thinkers, he was consumed in a cycle of foreign colonialism, domestic despotism, the narrow-mindedness of official religious institutions, and the superstitions of the common people prevalent in the Egyptian society of his time, and fell into a path that was perhaps not the logical continuation of his early life. Al-Jabri refers to these conditions with the term "the literature of tribulation." In my opinion, these are the conditions of most people living in the modern and decadent history of Islamic countries. Sayyid Qutb's life must also be read with this approach.

The Intellectual Lineage of Sayyid Qutb

In my view, Sayyid Qutb must be understood both in continuity with and in rupture from the currents that preceded him. The importance of recognizing this lineage lies in the fact that, in my opinion, the claims of some journalists that the Iranian Revolution was influenced by Sayyid Qutb, or that many of our thinkers were his disciples, are not credible. Before the revolution, only a few of Sayyid Qutb's texts had been translated, and these texts were not so widespread that we could speak of his fundamental influence. Most of Sayyid Qutb's books were translated into Persian after the revolution, and Iran's intellectual community, with few exceptions, became acquainted with his thought late. The book Milestones, which is the subject of my discussion, was translated into Persian in 1998 or 1999. Consequently, the Muslim Brotherhood knew him, but Iranians did not. This is not unique to Sayyid Qutb; another figure who was recognized late in Iran is Ali Abd al-Raziq, whose very important book Islam and the Foundations of Governance has only been translated into Persian for a little over a decade. It is said that since its first publication, this book has had the greatest impact in Arab countries and led to its author being declared an apostate. Yet this important text, too, has only been translated into Persian in the last 10 to 15 years. On this basis, one might say that the intellectual and reformist current in our society is not very familiar with the ideas of the Arab world, and does not know Arab thinkers to the extent that it knows Western thinkers. In the last 10 years, of course, more conferences, meetings, and works about Sayyid Qutb have been held and published, and Iranians' familiarity with him is increasing. Unfortunately, one of the reasons Sayyid Qutb has been prominent in this decade is the emergence, growth, and expansion of so-called Qutbist, fundamentalist, jihadist, and similar currents. But what is Sayyid Qutb's intellectual lineage? The twentieth century has been called the century of awakening for Islamic countries. The emphasis on the term "awakening" is important. In Western literature, the Enlightenment is spoken of as following the obscurantism of the Middle Ages, but in Islamic countries, the metaphor of sleep and awakening is used, and the previous period is called a period of slumber and narcosis, while the twentieth century is called the age of uprising and motivation, because it is in this century that most Islamic countries achieved independence and their political movements against European colonialism came to fruition. Many renowned thinkers belong to the twentieth century. The abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate as the last Islamic caliphate in the 1920s greatly activated political thought. One of the important figures of this awakening is Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani. Of course, he must be considered alongside Muhammad Abduh as a pair. In the humanities, pairs like Marx-Engels are important. The Afghani-Abduh pair also plays a decisive role. The Afghani-Abduh current is recognized as a movement for religious and rational reform, combating superstitions, and reopening the gates of ijtihad. Among them, Sheikh Muhammad Abduh is a very unknown figure among Iranians, whose rational theology deserves attention. But the legacy of Afghani-Abduh seemed paradoxical, meaning that to the same extent an idea spreads, it can become distorted. The paradoxical nature of this legacy also means that both the current of religious reform or religious intellectualism and the current of fundamentalism or principlism, etc., attributed themselves to it. Of course, names matter, and in Islamic countries we face a battle of names. But the question was: who is the true disciple of Afghani-Abduh and the real heir to their legacy?

Filali-Ansari is one of those who has worked in this area and says: everything began at the start of the twentieth century with the dispute over the legacy of Sayyid Jamal and Sheikh Muhammad Abduh. The dispute between two students of this school: Rashid Rida and Ali Abd al-Raziq. In Filali-Ansari's view, Rashid Rida is the founder of the Islamist current, or the political Islam current, or, loosely, religious fundamentalism, and Ali Abd al-Raziq is the founder of the religious reform current or religious intellectualism. Sayyid Qutb is a student of Rashid Rida and falls within the continuation of his current; whereas a figure like Fazlur Rahman is a student of Ali Abd al-Raziq. By accepting this division, one can distinguish between the rational and the

One must also consider the decisive role of religion in these countries and its impact on individuals' lives. The position of religion in Islamic countries differs from its position in European countries. Marx says that the critique and re-reading of religion is the prerequisite of all critique. But the situation in Islamic countries is by no means identical to the situation Marx refers to. In Islamic countries, religion is not opposed to culture; rather, it is the hard core of culture, and the critique of religion is not only unfinished but is in its initial stage. Religion remains the constitutive principle of our worldview, and consequently, one cannot study social thought without dealing with the dossier of religion. As a result, apart from colonialism and despotism, one must also pay attention to the central role of religion—especially a pervasive religion that ranges from the official religion of the sheikhs of Al-Azhar to the religious superstitions in the popular Sufism of the Egyptians.

Another important issue is the specific conditions of the social classes of Egyptians in that period. The Egypt in which Sayyid Qutb was born in 1906—the same year Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, was also born. This coincides with the Constitutional period in Iran, and ten years later we are faced with the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate. In these same years, the Soviet Communist Revolution occurs, and the world is divided into two camps of socialism and capitalism. In the Egypt of that period, a prosperous, Western-oriented elite is formed; alongside it, a deprived underclass is also taking shape, and one must pay attention to these class tensions. Under such conditions, Sayyid Qutb is born into a prosperous family of small landowners, but a political one, most of whose members are opposed first to the monarchy and later to Nasserism; his brothers and sisters have all been tortured and imprisoned. It is said that his nephew, Rif'at, was tortured before his eyes and later executed. Some link Sayyid Qutb's fate to that of his brother Muhammad Qutb, who flees to Saudi Arabia, and say that the new reading of him is the Muhammad Qutbian reading. With this history, Sayyid Qutb, unlike Hassan al-Banna, is not a cleric or religious scholar and studies at university. This is an important point because today's fundamentalism is also not a product of the official religious institution and takes shape outside the official religious institution. Sayyid Qutb earns a bachelor's degree in literature, becomes a teacher, and works in the ministry. He is a teacher and literary critic, close to Taha Hussein, Abbas al-Aqqad, and Tawfiq al-Hakim—the novelist, literary, and intellectual figures of Egypt. Even when he studies the Quran, he does so with an academic literary approach.

This situation continues until 1948, when he travels to America on a mission to study educational systems. This trip to America reminds me of Tocqueville's trip to America. Of course, Tocqueville's America in 1830 is different from Sayyid Qutb's America in 1948. Upon his return, Tocqueville writes Democracy in America, which he is fascinated by; in that America, freedom and equality go hand in hand, and unlike France, it is religion that brings this freedom and equality and does not oppose them. A century later, however, Sayyid Qutb has an experience exactly opposite to Tocqueville's. Upon his return, in a text, he assesses American civilization as a materialist, individualist, racist

(racist) and morally degenerate civilization. One of the reasons for his disillusionment is that precisely in 1949, when Sayyid Qutb is in America, Hassan al-Banna, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, is assassinated, and Sayyid Qutb writes that he witnessed the Americans' joy and elation, that they were happy about the assassination of our political leader. Upon returning to Egypt, he first becomes close to the Brotherhood and eventually, through stages, joins them.

If we were to periodize Sayyid Qutb's life, he has three autobiographical texts. One of the reasons these autobiographies are so compelling is that autobiography is generally rare in our religious and mystical culture. The biographies of great scholars are not written by themselves, but by their disciples, because in our ethics it is considered unseemly for a person to write about himself. Disciples write them, and they usually do so with a thoroughly eulogistic approach. This is why it is striking that in the biographies of great Islamic figures like Sayyid Jamal and others, written by others, usually disciples, money is absent, and secondly, women (wife, mother, sister, etc.) are absent. The fascination of Sayyid Qutb, however, lies in his three autobiographical texts. He never married, yet he also writes an account of his unrequited love. He writes his letters to his mother and sisters. We know Sayyid Qutb's sisters and nieces by name. In his life, women play a serious and social role. In his autobiographies, Sayyid Qutb divided his life into 5 stages. Later biographies also mention a three-stage or two-stage division. I will focus on only two stages. He lived a total of 59 years. Up to the age of 43-44, that is, his return from his trip to America, can be called the period of the teacher, intellectual, and literary critic. In this period, he is one of the intellectuals of his time. But from 1949 to 1966, when he is executed and martyred, Sayyid Qutb is known as a theoretician, party member, and radical militant. It is interesting that others usually begin as a militant in their youth and then become a literary critic and intellectual, but Sayyid Qutb follows the opposite path. From this, I want to conclude that Sayyid Qutb's thought is radicalized under the influence of specific circumstances and situations. Sayyid Qutb has more than 20 books, but one of his influential books, even in Iran, is Social Justice in Islam. In this period, socialist thought alongside nationalism was important in Islamic countries. The majority of Islamic countries had a cooperation with socialist Russia against the capitalist camp, which was the West. Sayyid Qutb also, after returning, draws close to the Brotherhood. During the Free Officers' coup, Jamal Abdel Nasser and the Muslim Brotherhood support them; it is even said that after the victory of this movement, Sayyid Qutb was supposed to play a role in the government. In this period, Sayyid Qutb's work is writing. But in 1954, for various reasons, the independent Egyptian government under Nasser announces the dissolution of all syndicates and political parties, including the Muslim Brotherhood, and then, due to an assassination attempt on Nasser, a period of repression and terror begins. Thousands of people, including Sayyid Qutb, are arrested. Sayyid Qutb is sentenced to 15 years in prison. During this time, he is freed for 8 months due to mediation from Iraq. In prison, he writes two of his books, namely In the Shade of the Qur'an and Milestones, and because of the book Milestones, he is executed along with several others. If we gather and combine these elements, we see that in Sayyid Qutb's 59-year life, 11 years are spent in prison. This situation of prison writings can be compared to Antonio Gramsci, who spent 11 of his forty-odd years in prison.

Violence and Takfir in the Thought of Sayyid Qutb

Therefore, in conclusion, I return to the first question: the first question was about the roots of violence in the thought of Sayyid Qutb. My first answer is that we cannot speak of Sayyid Qutb's thought in general, and we must ask which text is meant, because Sayyid Qutb's thought changes over the course of his 59-year life, and in different periods (at least the two periods mentioned), one cannot speak of violence in his thought. The second answer is that in the second period of his life, the text Milestones is different; it belongs to prison literature (like Voltaire, Cervantes, Casanova, Gramsci, etc.), and a prisoner has no civil life and is isolated, and consequently does not think in a communicative way with his own society and world. As a result, this text has been radicalized due to the conditions of prison. In my view, with a sociological approach to explaining violence and takfir in the works of Sayyid Qutb, we must pay attention to the objective reasons for violence in these societies and, with sociological and anti-essentialist reasons, to the fact that thought turns to violence. The violence that Sayyid Qutb puts on paper is the product of the colonial, despotic, and class structures of society, and he reveals the hidden violence. Today we also see overt violence, but we must also pay attention to hidden violence. Today, many of those who are drawn to takfiri groups have emerged from a violent and criminal background. Therefore, we should not be fooled by names and needlessly start ideological disputes. Of course, we must pay attention to the role of doctrines, but our task is to see how, when we ignore the violence that exists in social structures, this violence is conceptualized and put on paper. The violence that appears in Sayyid Qutb's text is the result of existing structural and hidden violence and has little to do with doctrines; its religious expression is simply because, in these societies, religion belongs to the hard core of culture and everything takes on a religious language. That is why religion is used to explain the situation. That is precisely why reformists also use the language of religion to fight against violence.

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At the Session on Violence and Religious Takfir with Regard to the Thought of Sayyid Qutb

Source: Etemad

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