On the author's work and influence

What kind of change has the 50 years that have passed since his martyrdom by execution brought to the understanding of Sayyid Qutb?

To begin understanding Sayyid Qutb with this question makes it necessary to read the text Qutb put forth, relatively independently of himself, of his own intention and performance as an author, through the effect of the work and the effect that its readers have had on it.

If Qutb himself had lived through the intervening 50 years, if, for example, he had lived through the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 that took place right after him and Israel's occupation, at the end of that war, of Jerusalem and most of the Palestinian lands, and then the collapse of Nasserite Arab Nationalist Socialism and its aftershocks, would he have reviewed what he wrote?

Qutb, who underwent serious paradigm shifts under the influence of what he lived through in his own life and reflected them in his works, would perhaps have written different things under these influences too. What kind of breeze would have struck Fizilal if he had seen, after him, the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the revolution that Khomeini made in Iran with all its symbolic indicators? And on top of that, what would he have said about the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the emergence of the new unipolar world order, the occupation of Iraq by the US, the genocide committed against Muslims in the middle of Europe, in Bosnia, by the Serbs, and in Azerbaijan by the Armenians, and the attitudes the world displayed toward them? September 11 and the US's new Middle East policies, a world in which the manifestations of international terror networks, said to have also benefited from Qutb's ideas, have replaced the whole image of Islam. And then what kind of ideas would he have put forth on the coups in Turkey, on February 28, and on the AK Parti government?

Does Fizilal or Mealim contain a perspective that would illuminate and exhaust all these events that would emerge after him?

How would Qutb, the author of exegesis, prose and stories, whose poet side, one we never knew, comes to the fore this time in his poem titled "Akhi ente hurrun vera es-sücûn" (My brother, even behind the dungeons you are free…), which stirred the squares in the Arab Spring and Counter-Revolution processes, have reacted to these processes if he were alive? And with what kind of Islamic political theory would he have answered the prominent stances of the Western countries that sold democracy in this process, of the Arab countries, and of Turkey?

Would the perspective he set out in Fizilal or Mealim suffice to illuminate everything, or would he feel the need to say new things on this occasion and about today?

If all these questions are asked this way, of course the answer is very clear: no one can know the real answer to this, and no one will be able to. Especially when it comes to Qutb, no one can take a stance on today's developments in his name. Perhaps everyone can only put forth something in the name of what they understand from Qutb.

We had underlined a principle that we know very well, have learned, and have been reminded of from Qutb.

That is, that infallibility, sanctity, inviolability and innocence cannot be attributed to any person, Qutb himself included.

In fact, we do not even have to learn this from Qutb, but if it is a matter of understanding Qutb, we can only underline his commitment to this well-known fundamental Islamic principle. The performance he displayed in understanding and conveying the Qur'an engraved in minds that no human servant, himself included, is to be considered exempt from criticism.

That is why Qutb's distinctiveness lies not in having put forth very original ideas, but on the contrary in the effort he made to teach some very fundamental Islamic teachings with his powerful literary performance.

In this effort, the sincerity, self-sacrifice and consistency that people found have of course been a very distinguishing feature. This is what made Qutb Qutb (the pole).

EVERYONE SEES EVERYTHING FROM THEIR OWN ODA (ROOM)

In fact, the forthcoming issue of the magazine Tezkire will be a special issue on Qutb, and there we will address other subjects concerning Qutb in more detail. But it was necessary to give a hot-off-the-press answer to the many positive or negative reactions that came to our last article.

The Oda'cı writer of the newspaper Sözcü has understood our assessment of the "effect" of Qutb's work as a mere

"eulogy"

of Qutb. That is, he did not understand what he read, or perhaps, without reading, he simply poured out the prejudice in his head. On top of that, because of the concepts in it, by saying

"there is no way for the readers of Yeni Şafak to understand this article"

he belittled the readers of Yeni Şafak at the same time.

He thought that the Yeni Şafak readers would not be able to understand a piece that he himself could not understand.

Of course it is best to leave this know-it-all, don't-know-that-he-doesn't-know attitude to itself. Because it is impossible to explain anything to this arrogant stance anyway. He evidently does not know hermeneutics, and because he does not know it he supposes that nobody does. I wonder, if we put it in this way, quoting Mevlana, would he understand?:

"No matter how much you explain, what you say is only as much as the person in front of you understands." That is why we say one thing and Sözcü's Odacı understands another. There is nothing strange or incomprehensible in this.

There is also a cliché in the science of hermeneutics, such as

"to think everyone is like oneself."

It is of course not very surprising for the Odacı to see and evaluate everything and everyone from his own intelligence-officer world.

It is perfectly natural for the work of Qutb, who put his life on the line to understand and live the Qur'an, to be reduced by the world of intelligence to a mere object of intelligence and operations.

There are rumors that in Turkey Qutb, in particular with his work titled

Social Justice in Islam,

attracted the interest of the MİT in order to create an awareness against the socialist movement; these are known.

But even if there is such a thing, this interest is not something that exhausts all the ways of understanding Qutb.

Intelligence organizations can regard everything as a tool in their own way: the Qur'an, the Sunnah, when the occasion arises Sufism and the orders, the whole of Islam...

In fact, Doğan Avcıoğlu, one of the greatest men of thought and action of Turkey's left-socialist movement, also found this same book of Qutb, Social Justice, quite a convenient material for attaching Muslims to the left movement, and worked on it. This too is a perspective from his own oda.

Today's socialist movement, too, is in pursuit of developing a "left theology." With an insincere, unscrupulous, faithless, purely instrumental approach...

For God's sake, hasn't Islam and its book, the Qur'an, suffered enough from those who use it itself as a tool? Because FETÖ used Islam on behalf of this or that center, should we consider Islam the work of those centers?

In the end everyone looks at everything from their own Oda, and humanity has not been able to find a cure for this either, because humanity is in any case afflicted with this Odacılık.