290 THE RISE OF ISLAMIC REVIVALISM
Supporters of Mohamed Morsi,
a prominent member of the Muslim
Brotherhood, celebrate his election as
President of Egypt in 2012. The Muslim
Brotherhood remains a major force in
Egyptian social and political life.alien to Islam. For him, jahiliyya
was not just a period of time, but
a state of being that was repeated
every time a society strayed from
the path of Islam.
Islamic governance
Qutb applied the concept of
jahiliyya to governments that he
did not consider properly Islamic.
...Islam possesses or is
capable of solving our basic
problems...without doubt
it will be more capable than
any other system we may
seek to borrow or imitate,
to work in our nation.
Sayyid QutbWe...believed once in English
liberalism and English
sympathy; but we believe
no longer, for facts are
stronger than words. Your
liberalness we see plainly
is only for yourselves...
Sayyid QutbHe strongly opposed any system
of government in which people
were in “servitude to others,”
considering this to be a violation
of God’s sovereignty. This included
communist nations (because of
their state-imposed atheism) as
well as polytheist nations such as
India, and Christian and Jewish
states. Qutb also argued that
many Muslim countries lived in
a state of jahiliyya because they
accepted alien—and in particular
Western—ideas and tried to
incorporate them into their
governments, laws, and cultures.
For Qutb, the only effective way
to rid society of jahiliyya was by
implementing an Islamic way of
life with its superior strategies and
beliefs for governing humanity.Renewed jihad
This line of thinking about
jahiliyya led Qutb and his followers
to advocate the implementation of
jihad. Understood this way, jihad
might be necessary for each new
generation of Muslims, at least as
long as foreign, un-Islamic forcesexerted their influence. This
meant that Muslim scholars
who interpreted the Qur’an in
such ways as to suggest that its
discussions of jihad were no longer
applicable in the modern world
were misled. Qutb argued that
jihad was meant to be enforced
in his day in the same way it was
when the Qur’an was revealed; this
might not mean eliminating every
non-Muslim from power, but it did
mean shedding the influence the
West had upon the world. Muslims
should do what was necessary
to ensure that a pure Islam as
a system of governance could
flourish uninhibited by un-Islamic
pressures. In this way, Qutb helped
to shape not only how future
Islamic revivalists would see
the world but how the people in
the West would come to perceive
Islam in the late 20th century. ■