Guidelines for the Islamic community

Sayyid Qutb's political interpretation of the Qur'an

Bibliographic Data

ID6292888
AuthorsRonald L Nettler (University of Oxford, corresponding author)
Year1996
Volume1
Issue2
Pages183-196
Publication date1996-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Political Ideologies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1356-9317 • E-ISSN: 1469-9613
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13569319608420736
OpenAlexW2061205094
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited3

The Egyptian Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966) was arguably the most influential theoretician of ‘political Islam’. His thought has also been popular in some non‐political Islamic circles. Reconstructing an idealized early Islamic polity in ahistorical fashion, Qutb pitted this ‘true Islam’ conceptually against an ahistorical Arabian pre‐Islamic culture (al‐Jahiliyah). This was an archetypal struggle between Good and Evil, Islam and anti‐Islam, which characterized the modern situation. The ‘true Islam‘—as polity and society—must be reinstituted on this earth. This is necessary both politically and theologically. Those secular ‘Muslim’ rulers and regimes ‘who rule not according to God's law’ are evil and non‐believers. Qutb believed his outlook to be the ‘true message’ of the Qur'an, negating other interpretations. His exegesis of chapter five, the Table, exemplified his ideas and methods. Qutb's political conception of Islam and his related exegesis were a response to the challenge of secularism and the post‐colonial Islamic institutional disarray

Apostasy · Exegesis · Ideology · Interpretation (philosophy · Islam · Political science · Politics · Polity · Secularism · Sociology · Theology · Education and Islamic Studies · Islamic Finance and Banking Studies · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies

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