Muhammad Qutb

Egyptian Islamist writer and scholar

Muhammad Qutb ('/k//ʌ//t//ə//b/; محمد قطب;‎ April 26, 1919 – April 4, 2014) was a Muslim scholar and the younger brother of the Egyptian Muslim thinker Sayyid Qutb. After his brother was executed by the Egyptian government, Muhammad moved to Saudi Arabia, where he promoted his brother's ideas. He studied English literature at the Cairo University, graduating in 1940, and later obtained diplomas in psychology and education. He was arrested a few days before Sayyid (on July 29, 1965) for his alleged co leadership along with his brother in a plot to kill leading political and cultural figures in Egypt and overthrow the government. His brother was hanged in 1966, but Muhammad's life was spared and he, along with other members of the Muslim Brotherhood took refuge in Saudi Arabia. While there, he edited and published Sayyid's books and taught as a professor of Islamic Studies at (according to different sources) either Mecca's Umm al Qura University, According to Lawrence Wright, who interviewed Muhammad Qutb and a close friend in college of bin Laden's, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, bin Laden "usually attended" Muhammad Qutb's weekly public lectures at King Abdul Aziz University. In addition to making available his brother's work, he worked to advance his ideas by "smoothing away" differences between his brother's radical supporters and more conservative Muslims, particularly other members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Muhammad took a less literal interpretation of his brother's famous statement that the Muslim world and Muslim governments were jahiliyya (returned to pagan ignorance, and thus no longer Muslim). He denied that the country that had given him refuge (Saudi Arabia) was jahiliyya He also worked to reconcile the doctrine of the Muslims Brothers with "the salafism that prevailed in his host country". Another very popular work, Islam: the Misunderstood Religion, expands on his brother's ideas, describing the ways in which fundamentalist Islam is superior to the "perverted inhuman crazy savage and backward" Western world. Qutb died at a hospital in Mecca on 4 April 2014 at the age of 94.

His teaching has been influential on 20th century Muslim thought, particularly in Saudi Arabia following his move there in 1972. In addition to his teaching position at the Umm al Qura University and the King Abdulaziz University Qutb also held private teaching circles and disseminated his lectures by means of cassettes, printed pamphlets and, from the late 1990s onwards, the internet. This helped to spread his popularity beyond university students. One of Qutb’s most famous students was Safar al Hawali, whose thesis on murji’ism and secularization draws heavily on Qutb’s own teaching on the subject. Qutb also played an important role in the Sahwa movement, the adherents of which often quote his writings. In addition, Muhammad Qutb’s editorial rights over the works of his late brother, Sayyid Qutb, enabled him to select which of Sayyid Qutb’s works were published and to censor aspects that he regarded as incompatible with Sayyid Qutb’s religious thought.

In many of his writings M. Qutb criticized the current state of the Muslim world and emphasized its weakness in relation to western powers. He attributed that weakness to the Muslim themselves and described them as having failed to apply the true teachings of Islam to their lives or to the running of their societies. He depicted the world as living in a state of ignorance, or jahiliyya, of an even greater degree than the first jahiliyya, which had preceded the coming of the Prophet Muhammad. However, Muslim ignorance is not the only cause for the crisis in the Muslim world, according to Qutb. He also attributed the weakness of the Muslim world to Islam’s enemies, whom he defined as the Christians and the Jews. Qutb often used the terms Crusaders to refer to Christians and Zionists to refer to Jews, by which he recalled earlier military conflicts between these religious groups and Muslim populations. Although Qutb regarded Christians as hostile to Islam, he viewed Christianity as having little influence over modern western society, which he argued is now controlled by Jews. According to Qutb, Jews' hatred for Islam leads them to attack it wherever they can. Although some of his works referred to military conflicts, Qutb regarded Western cultural imperialism as the main means by which Jews seek to destroy Islam and Muslims. He portrayed this as a more subtle and dangerous method than military invasion because it destroys the Muslim world from within; through their exposure to secular ideas and values Muslims deviate from their religion, which weakens Muslim society as a whole and undermines political loyalty to other Muslim lands. Qutb portrayed western cultural imperialism as having begun with the Napoleonic expedition into Egypt after and then continued and increased in severity. He saw school education as one of the main instruments of western cultural imperialism and criticized it for instilling a slavish admiration of the west into Muslim school children. He also regarded the school system as undermining Islamic values by allowing boys and girls to receive the same education and often together. In addition to schools, Qutb also described newspapers as being used to disseminate the same misinformation and values learnt by the children to their parents, so that these did not object to what their children were learning. He gave the example of Maronite Christians working in journalism in Egypt to support his argument that newspapers were part of a religiously motivated conspiracy to corrupt the Islamic values of their readers. A key aspect in Qutb’s argument is his opposition to the education of girls and the changing social status of women in Islamic societies. He regarded the mother as central to the religious upbringing of the children and argued that feminism was the most effective means of corrupting Muslim society. That is, firstly, because women who go out to work or to study neglect their children and fail to instil the proper values into them. Secondly, when girls receive a secular education at school they pass this on to their children when they become mothers, which ultimately leads to the corruption of society as a whole. Therefore, Muhammad Qutb concluded that feminism and calls for female emancipation should be seen as a serious threat to the stability of Muslim society. Qutb’s argument regarding western cultural influence over Muslim society draws heavily on anti Semitic conspiracy theories such as The Elders of Zion, and he referred to these texts in his writings. However, his view of the role of women in preserving social structures is not generally an important aspect of anti Semitic conspiracy theories. It may come from the French scientist and author Alexis Carrel, who also raised concerns about the effect of feminism on social structures and whose writings were well known to both Muhammad and Sayyid Qutb.