After 50 years, the work and influence of Sayyid Qutb

I was going to continue the sociology of July 15 that I had begun earlier, but today is the 50th anniversary of Sayyid Qutb's martyrdom. Without doubt, Sayyid Qutb is one of the important names who have most influenced Islamic thought and political movements over the last 60 years.

Because he is someone whose thoughts and works have been the subject of very different readings, and has therefore always been at the center of debate, we can say that some interpretations or perceptions of the author are predominantly in vogue.

It is also very clear that these fashionable interpretations form a serious obstacle to seeing the depth or subtlety in Qutb.

When, 50 years ago, he was tried and sentenced to death for what he thought and the stance he held, Qutb was offered the option of being pardoned in return for apologizing for what he had done and said, in order to live. He rejected this option without the slightest hesitation and declared that "one cannot apologize to a hypocrite." In those years, by saying

"My brother, even behind the dungeons you are free / My brother, even behind these bars you are free / If you hold fast to God / What can the schemes and traps of the servants do to you?" (Ahi ente hurr)

he was proclaiming that his politics and his cause were not limited to this world, and that, since it was concerned with servitude to God and only God, it never left room for despair or pessimism.

In the 50th year of his martyrdom, we undoubtedly have more than enough data on how Qutb has been perceived and what kind of work he produced.

Qutb left a work behind, a work that has affected the world.

A work that has left an effect on Muslims, that has changed and influenced their perception, behavior and thinking on many subjects. The same work has undoubtedly also left a mark on those who do not like him. We know that this mark is not at all positive. Perhaps this antipathy can be attributed to an effect that reached them through the bad consumers of his work who lead to violence. But in my view it has an origin beyond that. Even without those bad consumers in between, it would be hard for those who do not like him to find in him, when they reach him, things to regard with sympathy.

Because Qutb's most important characteristic is that he has no apologist leaning whatsoever. He has no rush to make Islam look "pleasant" to people.

On the contrary, since Islam by itself has the address most suited to human nature, he stipulates that it be presented just as it is, without any attempt to make it appear different from what it is.

Qutb frequently emphasizes that trying to make Islam appear different from what it is by making concessions to those who might not be able to embrace it because of this or that feature, merely presenting an Islam that will please people, would have a distorting effect on revelation. And he says that Islam does not invite people to follow their whims and desires, but invites them to submit to what is better for them, even if they do not know it, even if they do not notice.

Qutb's side that keeps away from a defensive language in his invitation to Islam, that rejects the apologism peculiar to modernists, is without doubt one of the features that make him original.

It is quite clear that he creates a great feeling of self-confidence in those who read him, but the possibility that it may have led to a kind of arrogance, at popular levels that do not deserve that self-confidence, has also not been remote.

The effects of those who have left a notable work are naturally very varied. The relationship between work and effect is an extremely dynamic and complex one. Perhaps the aspect of Qutb that is even more original than this is that he in fact characterized his own work merely as a signpost pointing to the real great Book. Qutb conceived all of his work so as to leave no authority other than the Qur'an to direct the life, thoughts and actions of Muslims.

That is why he conceived his own work as a simple means of transport that would drop out of the picture once the real great work was reached and one was left alone with it.

Although he undoubtedly made a very important contribution to the history of exegesis, he did not even present his 8-volume work (translated into Turkish and printed in 16 and 12 volumes)

Fi Zilal al-Qur'an

as an exegesis. He presented this work rather as

In the Shade of the Qur'an,

impressions from a life that one has tried to live. By naming the book this way, he emphasizes the special nature of a believer's relationship with the Qur'an. The Qur'an does not stand before us like a lifeless text. It has an extremely powerful effect on the person who reads it with belief. This can also be regarded as an important obstacle to understanding the text objectively. All the conditions, all the intentions and all the temporality of the person trying to understand the book come into play. Like a shade, the Qur'an gives peace, protection and coolness all at once. Even the metaphorical description of the relationship with the Qur'an through these existential qualifications, rather than the terms of semantics, understanding, knowing and explaining, is aimed at drawing attention to life, vitality and dynamism. Its equivalent in hermeneutics, as an attitude that cares about life, history and the reader against text-centrism, could be called

left hermeneutics.

In the display of the experiences of understanding and interpretation in In the Shade of the Qur'an, one encounters, rather than an exegete, a man of letters, and moreover one of a personality so at ease that he in no way suffers from any obscurity of meaning in the Qur'an.

In In the Shade of the Qur'an, the problem of understanding is overcome by itself, and the problematic of living is moved to directly. This makes itself felt abundantly in all his expositions on individual verses. Still, because the minimal, or at least formal, need to respond to the expectation of an exegesis book requires him to dwell on the verses one by one, the flow can at times falter.

Thus, the quality of Qutb that directs people to the Qur'an aims also to prevent the substitution of any kind of personal authority, himself included. Thanks to his effort to place the Qur'an at the center of Muslim thought and life, it is inevitable that he himself becomes open to every kind of criticism.

That is why, in fact, something called "Qutbism" is not possible in the understanding of Islam that he inspired and recommended.

There is a tendency toward a kind of objectivism in his way of interpreting verses, and although this has been the subject of a criticism that a particular interpretation may lead to closing the way to every other interpretation, Qutb has not established an authoritarianism that would prevent overcoming it.

That is why, 50 years later, the contributions of Qutb's work to Islamic thought and politics today stand readily open to evaluation with a critical approach.

What would really finish off Qutb, who has a clear stance against every kind of personal sanctification, would be to attribute a kind of sanctity or inviolability to him or his work as well.