The dialectic in contemporary Egyptian social thought: The scripturalist and modernist discourses of Sayyid Qutb and Hasan Hanafi

International Journal of Middle East Studies

Volumn 29, Issue 3, 1997, Pages 377-401

  Akhavi, Shahrough ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0005744622     PISSN: 00207438     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0020743800064825     Document Type: Article

References (98)

1. To Professor Serif Mardin belongs the credit for explicitly identifying this dialectic and organizing an international conference on it in Washington in 1989.
2. cAdnan Musallam, "Sayyid Qutb and Social Justice," Journal of Islamic Studies 4, 1 (January 1993); Ahmad Moussalli, Radical Islamic Fundamentalism: The Ideological and Political Discourse of Sayyid Qutb (Beirut: AUB Press, 1992); Gilles Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 36-69; and W. Shepard, Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996).
3. cAdnan Musallam, "Sayyid Qutb and Social Justice," Journal of Islamic Studies 4, 1 (January 1993); Ahmad Moussalli, Radical Islamic Fundamentalism: The Ideological and Political Discourse of Sayyid Qutb (Beirut: AUB Press, 1992); Gilles Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 36-69; and W. Shepard, Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996).
4. cAdnan Musallam, "Sayyid Qutb and Social Justice," Journal of Islamic Studies 4, 1 (January 1993); Ahmad Moussalli, Radical Islamic Fundamentalism: The Ideological and Political Discourse of Sayyid Qutb (Beirut: AUB Press, 1992); Gilles Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 36-69; and W. Shepard, Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996).
5. cAdnan Musallam, "Sayyid Qutb and Social Justice," Journal of Islamic Studies 4, 1 (January 1993); Ahmad Moussalli, Radical Islamic Fundamentalism: The Ideological and Political Discourse of Sayyid Qutb (Beirut: AUB Press, 1992); Gilles Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 36-69; and W. Shepard, Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996).
6. cAdnan Musallam, "Sayyid Qutb and Social Justice," Journal of Islamic Studies 4, 1 (January 1993); Ahmad Moussalli, Radical Islamic Fundamentalism: The Ideological and Political Discourse of Sayyid Qutb (Beirut: AUB Press, 1992); Gilles Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 36-69; and W. Shepard, Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996).
7. cAdnan Musallam, "Sayyid Qutb and Social Justice," Journal of Islamic Studies 4, 1 (January 1993); Ahmad Moussalli, Radical Islamic Fundamentalism: The Ideological and Political Discourse of Sayyid Qutb (Beirut: AUB Press, 1992); Gilles Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 36-69; and W. Shepard, Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996).
8. cAdnan Musallam, "Sayyid Qutb and Social Justice," Journal of Islamic Studies 4, 1 (January 1993); Ahmad Moussalli, Radical Islamic Fundamentalism: The Ideological and Political Discourse of Sayyid Qutb (Beirut: AUB Press, 1992); Gilles Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 36-69; and W. Shepard, Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996).
9. cAdnan Musallam, "Sayyid Qutb and Social Justice," Journal of Islamic Studies 4, 1 (January 1993); Ahmad Moussalli, Radical Islamic Fundamentalism: The Ideological and Political Discourse of Sayyid Qutb (Beirut: AUB Press, 1992); Gilles Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 36-69; and W. Shepard, Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996).
10. cAdnan Musallam, "Sayyid Qutb and Social Justice," Journal of Islamic Studies 4, 1 (January 1993); Ahmad Moussalli, Radical Islamic Fundamentalism: The Ideological and Political Discourse of Sayyid Qutb (Beirut: AUB Press, 1992); Gilles Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 36-69; and W. Shepard, Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996).
11. cAdnan Musallam, "Sayyid Qutb and Social Justice," Journal of Islamic Studies 4, 1 (January 1993); Ahmad Moussalli, Radical Islamic Fundamentalism: The Ideological and Political Discourse of Sayyid Qutb (Beirut: AUB Press, 1992); Gilles Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 36-69; and W. Shepard, Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996).
12. Indeed, turāth involves not just sacred texts and commentaries on them but, in general, the whole legacy of the sacred and the nonsecular, including philosophy, literature, science, and popular culture. Turäth does not appear frequently in Qutb's writings. His concerns are better captured by concepts such as al-tasawwur al-islāmi, which, however, does cover some of the "terrain" of turāth as defined earlier,7 especially the sacred texts.
13. ⊂Arabī (1990), 383-84.
14. ⊂Arabī (1990), 383-84.
15. ⊂Arabī (1990), 383-84.
16. ⊂Aqqad prior to the latter's turn to purely Islamic themes; Haddad, "Sayyid Qutb," 69.
17. According to Khadduri, maslaha is a term of jurisprudence that, strictly speaking, means "utility," as opposed to madarra or mafsada ("injury"), but generally, it denotes "welfare" and has been used by jurists in the modern period to mean "general good" or "public interest." See Majid Khadduri, Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed., vol. VI, fascicules 109-10 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1989), 738-40,
18. ⊂iyya fi al-lslām, 9th ed. (Beirut: Dār al-Shurūq, 1983), 119 ff.
19. ⊂Aziz (717-20);
20. ⊂Amāra, al-Sahwa al-Islāmiyya wa al-Tahaddī al-Hadärī (Cairo: Dār al-Shurūq, 1989), 149, 152-53.
21. See Shahrough Akhavi, "Sayyid Qutb: The Poverty of Philosophy and the Vindication of Islamic Tradition," in Cultural Transitions in the Middle East, ed. Serif Mardin (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), 130-52.
22. ⊂āsira (Cairo: Maktaba Madbūlī, 1988), 167-300.
23. For a somewhat different periodization of Qutb's life from that of Hanafi, see Haddad, Contemporary Islam; and for yet a third periodization, see Diyāb, Sayyid Qutb.
24. For a somewhat different periodization of Qutb's life from that of Hanafi, see Haddad, Contemporary Islam; and for yet a third periodization, see Diyāb, Sayyid Qutb.
25. Qutb's secular phase lasted from the 1920s to about the end of World War II. He abandoned his secularism thereafter. However, his work in the late 1940s and early 1950s was not so adamantly concerned with the fundamentals of the faith as it was to become after his prison experiences, which began in the mid-1950s and lasted until the end of his life.
26. ⊂Arabī, 1951); and Dirāsat Islāmiyya (Cairo: Maktabat Lajnat al-Shabāb al-Muslim, 1953).
27. ⊂Arabī, 1951); and Dirāsat Islāmiyya (Cairo: Maktabat Lajnat al-Shabāb al-Muslim, 1953).
28. ⊂Arabī, 1951); and Dirāsat Islāmiyya (Cairo: Maktabat Lajnat al-Shabāb al-Muslim, 1953).
29. ⊂Arabī, 1951); and Dirāsat Islāmiyya (Cairo: Maktabat Lajnat al-Shabāb al-Muslim, 1953).
30. ⊂Aziz (717-20) as jāhilī and mushrik.
31. ⊂, Intellectual Origins of Islamic Resurgence in the Modern Arab World (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 139.
32. ⊂, Intellectual Origins of Islamic Resurgence in the Modern Arab World (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 139.
33. ⊂Arabiyya, 1962), 52-53.
34. ⊂ālim fi al-Tarīq, 2nd ed. (Cairo[?]: Maktaba al-Wahba[?] 1964[?]), 37.
35. ⊂ is, 46, 84-85, 100.
36. IbJd., 102.
37. Ibid., 103.
38. ⊂ālim fi al-Tarīq, 32.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid., 118-19.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid.
45. ⊂Amara, commenting on this passage, puts it this way: "Sayyid Qutb went beyond Mawdudi in pronouncing society to be jāhilī and pronouncing kufr upon it. He stated what Mawdudi had not, passing the judgment of kufr upon the umma, and not upon the society and the state. He expressed this judgment with certainty, and he indeed pronounced the judgment of this umma's being in a state of kufr over the centuries";
46. ⊂Amara, al-Sahwa, 153.
47. Ibid., 32.
48. Ibid.
49. He puts it this way: "[Islamic values] were not the creation of history and have no intrinsic relation to time. They are a reality that came to humankind from Allah, transcending human reality and material existence"; ibid., 118-19.
50. Ibid., 119-20.
51. ⊂alim fī al-Tarīq, 124. For these matters, Qutb categorically forbids turning to jāhilī society. Yet, one cannot simply apply advances in engineering and the physical sciences without regard to these elements, which entail complex considerations of public policy and property rights (including patents) for which 7th-century truths not only would not provide guidance but could present obstacles.
52. ⊂a wa al-Nashr, 1961), 8.
53. 34This is not to say that later on jurists did not devise mechanisms that might be considered creating the preliminary groundwork for the construction of an understanding of "social justice" in Islamic history. The main one that needs to be mentioned is the concept of maslaha mursala - or the public interest. If one can adduce the idea that a public interest inheres, then one can proceed to maintain that one element of the public interest is the achievement of social justice.
54. ⊃i, and Ibn Hanbal.
55. ⊃ī, Kitāb al-Sunan, "Ashribah," 48, as cited by A. J. Wensinck, Concordance et Indices de la Tradition Musulmane (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1962), III-IV:155.
56. Toby E. Huff, The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 216; Joseph Schacht, Introduction to Islamic Law (Oxford: Oxford Uni-versity Press, 1964), 203, cited in Huff, p. 217. Emphasis added.
57. Toby E. Huff, The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 216; Joseph Schacht, Introduction to Islamic Law (Oxford: Oxford Uni-versity Press, 1964), 203, cited in Huff, p. 217. Emphasis added.
58. ⊃an anticipated developments that occurred in later historical time: "We have left out nothing from the Book."
59. ⊃ li al-Nashr, 1992), 42-43.
60. Mohamed Ahmed Sherif, Ghazali's Theory of Virtue (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1975), 73.
61. Ibid., 72.
62. ⊂āalim fi al-Tarīq, 56-57. But it turns out that virtually throughout his work, Qutb is willing to consider the changing nature of Islamic prescriptions only within the confines of the doctrine of "abrogation of one text by another" (al-nāsikh wa al-mansūkh). One is therefore tempted to say that Qutb's attribution of a dynamic element to Islam occurs only when it suits his argument.
63. ⊂āalim fi al-Tarīq, 56-57. But it turns out that virtually throughout his work, Qutb is willing to consider the changing nature of Islamic prescriptions only within the confines of the doctrine of "abrogation of one text by another" (al-nāsikh wa al-mansūkh). One is therefore tempted to say that Qutb's attribution of a dynamic element to Islam occurs only when it suits his argument.
64. Olivier Carré and Gerard Michaud, Les Frères musulmans: Égypte et Syrie (Paris: Editions Gallimard/Juillard, 1983), 84, 233.
65. ⊂Awda's al-Māl wa al-Hukm fī al-Islām (Cairo/Beirut, 1951). According to Hasan Hanafi, prior to publishing his book on the subject, Sayyid Qutb had written an article in 1949 on the matter, although this is not cited in the extended bibliography of Qutb's works attached to the end of Diyāb's Sayyid Qutb.
66. ⊂Awda's al-Māl wa al-Hukm fī al-Islām (Cairo/Beirut, 1951). According to Hasan Hanafi, prior to publishing his book on the subject, Sayyid Qutb had written an article in 1949 on the matter, although this is not cited in the extended bibliography of Qutb's works attached to the end of Diyāb's Sayyid Qutb.
67. ⊂iyya in 1944, although this was during his secular phase. Thanks to an anonymous referee for this last piece of information.
68. ⊃an, the root associated with notions of rule is a-m-r, not h-k-m. He remains a scripturalist, however, despite this innovation, because he simply would say that the meaning of the text is self-evident.
69. ⊃an or the sunna, Hudhaybi stresses that he has no trouble with the idea that to Allah accrues all power in the universe - all Muslims must avow this. But he objects to the idea of Qutb and his followers that this principle of Allah's absolute power means that human beings cannot make any laws for the regulation of society. What is unacceptable is that a self-appointed group can apply a litmus test to others as to whether their behavior enhances or detracts from Allah's omnipotence. "This view of hākimiyya is erroneous." Allah has given human beings the ability to write and implement laws: "Truly, Almighty Allah has left us enormous leeway in the affairs of the world."
70. ciyya, 9th ed., 12.
71. ⊂Amāra, "Takfīr al-Muslim," 18.
72. ⊂ālim fī al-Tarīq.
73. "If [Qutb's] evolution had continued in its natural course, he would have ended with scientific socialism to correspond with Islam, and he would have become one of the pillars of the Islamic left in Egypt and one of its primary supports in the Islamic world." See Hanafi, "Āthār al-Imām," 219.
74. Ibid., 167-300.
75. Hanafi, "al-Tadāmun wa al-Wahda," in Hanafī, al-Dīn wa al-Thawra fī Misr, 1952-1981, vol. IV: Al-Dīn wa al-Tanmiya al-Qawmiyya (Cairo: Maktaba Madbūlī, n.d.), 110, 116 ff.
76. ⊂is, 8, 16, 19-20.
77. ⊃an and the Sunnah to know what Allah wants. No one who wants to do so can claim authority in the name of God, which is what Europe experienced in the form of theocracy. There is nothing of this in Islam. No one can speak in Allah's name except His Prophet. There are specific texts, and they are what determine what Allah has legislated. The statement that religion is for the sake of reality is misunderstood and misapplied. Yes, this religion is for the sake of reality, but which reality? The reality that this religion itself establishes, according to its system, which simultaneously is in consonance with human nature, and meeting true human needs in their entirety. These are needs which the Creator has established, and He knows what He has created. . . . Religion does not face reality-of whatever kind - in order that it be established and studied by reference to one of its documents and by reference to a legal ruling that relates to it, like a tabula rasa. It faces reality in order to weigh it on its scales, and it establishes what it establishes and discards what it discards. It creates another reality if it is not satisfied with it. The reality that it creates is reality. This is the meaning of the phrase, "Islam is a religion for reality," or what it should mean in its true sense. Perhaps the question may be asked: "Is it not the interest of human beings that forms their reality?" Again, we go back to the question that Islam poses and answers: "Are you more knowledgeable, or is Allah?" "Allah knows, and you do not know." The interest of human beings is contained in Allah's law, as revealed by Allah and propagated by the Prophet [ibid., 93-95]. Repeatedly, Qutb reifies Islam. Even when he speaks about ijtihād and istinbāt, he seems to be imputing historicity to human behavior in a passing and glancing way. "This religion does" or "Islam says" are the operative kinds of expressions in his discourse.
78. ⊂Aqida ilā al-Thawra, vol. I: Al-Muqaddimāt al-Nazariyya (Cairo: Maktaba Madbūlī, 1988), 39.
79. See ibid., back cover.
80. Boullata is wholly persuasive when he says that for Hanafi the turāth consists of "specific realizations of certain beliefs and attitudes under particular historical circumstances"; Issa J. Boullata, Trends and Issues in Contemporary Arab Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 40.
81. ⊂Amal-al-lmāma (Cairo: Maktaba Madbūlī, 1988), 5.
82. Abũ Zayd, Naqd al-Khitāb al-Dīnī, 155.
83. ⊂Aqīda ilā al-Thawra, vol. I, 243. On the preceding page, he maintains that: In modern reformist movements [presumably the Salafiyya] attempts to reconstruct the theory of knowledge or to formulate the theoretical introduction to the science of usūl al-dīn have not taken place as they did in the past. Instead, the theory of knowledge remained hidden, its place being taken by the description of the historical development of knowledge in order to know what is authentic and what is extraneous to it. The goal of defining the course of knowledge in history is to know how the transition occurs from unity to diffusion, from community to separatedness, so that we can transcend the current condition of diffusion and segmentation to the original condition of unity and community. As a consequence [of this transcendence] the science of usul al-dīn will revert to being a guide for the conduct of the people toward action.
84. It has been suggested that Qutb emphasized the importance of theory as the indispensable prerequisite of practice. This is reflected in his use of the word "conception" [tasawwur]. While it is true that Qutb was interested in theory, it is in a way that is different from Hanafi. Hanafi's theory is a critical theory, according to which subject matter is held to be problematical until demonstrated to the contrary. Qutb's theory is essentially an uncritical "Islamic conception" that becomes the template for human action. Action is Qutb's watchword, though the agent that acts is "Islam."
85. ⊂Aqīdah ilā al-Thawra, vol. 1, 89.
86. ⊂arite-Ghazalian conceptions exercise their hold over the social group monopolizing power in society, and the social group in turn strengthens its monopoly of control over the thought by acting as sole gatekeepers to this thought, termed the turāth.
87. ⊂Aqida ilā al-Thawra, vol. I, 35, 75, 211.
88. IbJd., 5.
89. IbJd., 223.
90. ⊂Arabī li-al-Bahth wa-al-Nashr, 1980), 15.
91. ⊂Aqlda ilā al-Thawra, vol. V, 229.
92. Ibid., 1:79.
93. Ibid., 33.
94. Ibid., V:387-88.
95. ⊂alim fi al-Tarl̄q, 49.
96. The use of seemingly modern concepts by scripturalists to vindicate scripturalist ends is stressed in the recent work of Serif Mardin. For example, see his intellectual biography of Said Beddiuzzeman Nursi, Islam and Social Change in Turkey (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989); also, Mardin, ed., Cultural Transitions in the Middle East. Also, see Sami Zubaida, Islam, the People, and the State, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1994).
97. The use of seemingly modern concepts by scripturalists to vindicate scripturalist ends is stressed in the recent work of Serif Mardin. For example, see his intellectual biography of Said Beddiuzzeman Nursi, Islam and Social Change in Turkey (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989); also, Mardin, ed., Cultural Transitions in the Middle East. Also, see Sami Zubaida, Islam, the People, and the State, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1994).
98. The use of seemingly modern concepts by scripturalists to vindicate scripturalist ends is stressed in the recent work of Serif Mardin. For example, see his intellectual biography of Said Beddiuzzeman Nursi, Islam and Social Change in Turkey (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989); also, Mardin, ed., Cultural Transitions in the Middle East. Also, see Sami Zubaida, Islam, the People, and the State, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1994).