Sayyid Qutb is widely considered to be one of the founding fathers of 20th century radical Islamism. I’ve read about him in Paul Berman’s fine book Terror and Liberalism, and in an informative series of essays* by “Ideofact” blogger Bill Allison, who has this “boilerplate” description of Qutb:
Sayyid Qutb was an Egyptian Islamist, an early theoretician for the Muslim Brotherhood, and has been described by some as the brains of bin Laden. He died in 1966 in an Egyptian prison.
Allison goes on to write:
[I]n Qutb’s version of the ideal Islamic society, the ruler would have absolute authority over education and legislation, over property and natural resources, who would preside over a society permanently on a war footing, even at times of peace. The legislation is dressed up with Islamic elements, but essentially what Qutb is arguing for is a fascist or totalitarian state after the 1920s and 1930s European model.
Berman makes similar points, and notes in particular what motivated Qutb — a fear that Islam was facing a battle “to exterminate this religion as even a basic creed, and to replace it with secular conceptions…” Berman then adds the provocative point that Qutb’s response actually comes from the apocalyptic tradition underlying — Berman argues — all totalitarian ideologies:
[I]n twentieth century Europe each of the totalitarian movements entertained a grand vision of modern civilization and of despeerate predicaments and utopian destines. Each of the totalitarian doctirnes of Europe expressed that vision by telling a version of the ur-myth, the myth of Armageddon. So did Qutb.
With him, too, there was a people of God. They happened to be the Muslims. The people of God had come under insidious attack from within their own society, by the forces of corruption and pollution. … There was going to be a terrible war against them, led by the Muslim vanguard. … [The reign of God] was going to create a perfect society, cleansed of its impurities and corruptions — as always in the totalitarian mythologies. (p. 98-99)*
Alexis Carrel
It turns out that Qutb had a more direct connection to a variety of European mysticism and nascent totalitarianism in the writings and philosophy of one Alexis Carrel — Nobel Prize in Medicine winner for his work on circulatory surgery and transplants, arch-conservative Catholic, Vichy regime supporter, and, in the end, apologist for Nazi euthanasia and eugenics programs.
Rudolph Walther, a historian living in Frankfurt, recently wrote a piece for the German newsweekly Die Zeit that discusses the Qutb-Carrel connection, “The strange teachings of Doctor Carrel: how a French Catholic doctor became a spiritual forefather of the radical Islamists.” Excerpts:
The superficial commonalities between Carrel and Qutb are plain: we meet the medical man’s elite in a “scientific monastery” as Qutb’s “avant garde,” and the Carrel’s “biological classes” are Qutb’s “belief classes.” Whether “civilization” (Carrel) or “barbarism” (Qutb) — neither are “worthy of us,” because they contradict “our true nature” (Carrel) or Qutb’s “good, healthy nature.” Both are quite in agreement in their goal to reconcile knowledge and belief.
The decisive affinities lie deeper, though. Qutb cites no author aside from the Koran as often and as extensively as Carrel. What fascinated Qutb about Carrel was, as Islamic Studies scholar Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi wrote in his 1996 book “Intellectual Origins of Islamic Resurgence,” first of all his view of humanity “which he relies on more than the Koran.” Second, Qutb follows Carrel’s method. The pious doctor complains that “man, this whole,” this unique, complex being, is being subdivided and torn apart by social reality and science… The exclusive concentration on the material nature of man had the effect of repressing his spiritual side. [...]
Qutb follows Carrel in making “human nature” the condition and measure of all thought and action. Because “human nature” is simultaneously posited as God-given, both immunize “human nature” against criticism, because God answers queries as little as “nature” does objections. The core of Qutb’s supposed Middle Eastern Islamism is formed by a naturalistic logical error that is deeply rooted in European philosophy… Carrel writes: “The goal of life is to follow the laws of life. We decipher these laws from our bodies and our souls, not from philosophical systems and concepts.” Thus ethical norms (”laws of life”) are derived directly from biological facts and psychological diagnoses. Translated to Qutb’s language, human freedom and thus a free, varied society are not possible, only obedience to the law of God. [...]
What Qutb calls “the Islamic method,” the integration of education, ethics, economics and politics to a unified system of “divine uniqueness,” matches Carrel’s “unification of all capabilities and their coordination to a single belief,” the “super-science” in every detail …*** [emphasis added]
In every detail, of course, but the underlying faith, but the similiarities do seem very strong. It’s also interesting to speculate about the degree to which Carrel’s field — the “parts is parts” world of organ transplants, coupled with the tissue rejection issues that bedeviled his efforts — influenced his philosophy. At any rate, an online biography records that in 1935,
Carrel published MAN, THE UNKNOWN, a work written upon the recommendation of a loose-knit group of intellectuals that he often dined with at the Century Club. In MAN, THE UNKNOWN, Carrel posed highly philosophical questions about mankind, and theorized that mankind could reach perfection through selective reproduction and the leadership of an intellectual aristocracy. The book, a worldwide best-seller and translated into nineteen languages, brought Carrel international attention. Carrel’s speculations about the need for a council of superior individuals to guide the future of mankind was seen by many as anti-democratic. ****
From Carrel’s introduction to “Man the Unknown”:
To progress again, man must remake himself. And he cannot remake himself without suffering. For he is both the marble and the sculptor. In order to uncover his true visage, he must shatter his own substance with heavy blows of his hammer.
Carrel doubtless didn’t see himself in need of remaking, he saw himself as wielding the hammer. From the final chapter of the same book:
We need, therefore, an institution capable of providing for the uninterrupted pursuit for at least a century of the investigations concerning man. Modern society should be given an intellectual focus, an immortal brain, capable of conceiving and planning its future, and of promoting and pushing forward fundamental researches, in spite of the death of the individual researchers, or the bankruptcy of the research institutes. Such an organization would be the salvation of the white races in their staggering advance toward civilization. This thinking center would consist, as does the Supreme Court of the United States, of a few individuals; the latter being trained in the knowledge of man by many years of study. It should perpetuate itself automatically, in such a manner as to radiate ever young ideas. Democratic rulers, as well as dictators, could receive from this source of scientific truth the information that they need in order to develop a civilization really suitable to man.
Carrel’s ideas, conflated as they were with others about diet, nutrition, and purity, have remained attractive — or at least not disqualifying — to certain subspecies of “ecological” thinking, as evidenced by the site providing the text above, “soilandhealth.org,” and other such enterprises.
So What
In one way, I’m not sure whether any of this was worth learning. An Islamist thinker, obscure to most of us, seems to have found support for his views in the writings of a right-wing European surgeon and mystic who is equally deservedly obscure to most of us.
On the other hand: know thy enemy. Qutb was bad enough, and Bin Laden and Zawahiri have taken his writings to the next murderous level. Understanding (or at least cataloguing) Qutb’s views and motives can help make sense of (or at least predict) those of his followers.
It may also be worthwhile to see that an apparently foreign and mysterious ideology like Qutb’s has analogues and even ancestry in certain cul-de-sacs of Western thought — which were for their part considered progressive, scientific, and forward-looking at one time, and still seem to beguile some people today.
Mainly, I just mean to point out the Qutb-Carrel connection as a kind of footnote to the more extensive and informed discussions of Qutb at “Ideofact” and elsewhere. The connection is more direct than the general “apocalypticism” that Berman sees Qutb’s ideas sharing with other totalitarian world views, so it may interest those of you who have read or will read Berman’s book. At any rate, if you’ve had the patience to bear with me, thank you!
=====
* Mr. Allison’s posts are organized by the chapters of one of Qutb’s main works, “Social Justice In Islam”:1 … 8:1, 8:2, 8:3, 8:4, 8:5, 8:4:1, 8:6. For a complete archive of the earlier chapter reviews, see Aziz Poonawalla’s ongoing archive of Allison’s posts about Qutb.
** Berman also points out that Bin Laden and Zawahiri notwithstanding, Qutb’s version of jihad was not terror pure and simple, but bound by Islamic tradition and the Qur’an:“Do not kill women and children” … “Fight for the cause of God those who fight against you, but do not commit aggression. God does not love aggressors.”
*** Spiritual forefather: “Vordenker,” lit. fore-thinker. View of humanity: Menschenbild, lit. “human image.” “Middle Eastern” translated from “orientalisch”, lit. oriental(istic), a more loaded term in English than in German, I think. “Matches in every detail” translated from “gleicht aufs Haar,” lit. “matches down to the hairs,”
**** The “loose knit group” at least overlapped with an organization called the Twilight Club, which still exists today, primarily as a vehicle for the metaphysical speculations of deceased member Walter Russell.
