Milestones (book)

According to Qutb, the Muslim community has been "extinct for a few centuries" and reverted to Jahiliyyah ("The state of ignorance of the guidance from God"[8]) because those who call themselves Muslims have failed to follow "the laws of God" or Sharia (also shariah, Shari'a, or Shari'ah), traditional Islamic law.[9] Following the sharia is not just important but a defining attribute of Muslims, more necessary than belief itself,[10] because "according to the Shari'ah, 'to obey' is 'to worship'." This means Muslims must not only refrain from worshiping anything other than God, they must not obey anything other than God: "anyone who serves someone other than God"—be that someone (or something) a priest, president, a parliament, or a legal statute of a secular state— is "outside God's religion", although he may "claim to profess this religion".[11]

Sharia is much more than a code of religious or public laws (according to Qutb), it is a "complete" way of life based on "submission to God alone,"[12] crowding out anything non-Islamic. Its rules range from "belief" to "administration and justice" to "principles of art and science."[13] Being God's law, sharia is "as accurate and true as any of the laws known as the 'laws of nature,'" such as motion, gravity or electricity, and part of the universal law "which governs the entire universe".[14]

The modern Muslim world has erred by approaching the Qur'an for the sake of "discussion, learning and information" or "to solve some scientific or legal problem." In fact it should be approached as a source of "instruction for obedience and action"[15] to remove man from the servitude of other men and to the servitude of God.[16]

When the law of God is established on earth, it will lead to blessings falling on all mankind.[17] Sharia is "the only guarantee" against "any kind of discord" in life.[10] and will "automatically" bring "peace and cooperation" among individuals. Knowledge of the "secrets of nature, its hidden forces and the treasures concealed in the expanses of the universe,"[17] will be revealed "in an easy manner." The "harmony between human life and the universe" of sharia law will approach the perfection of heaven itself.[Note 2]

Just as sharia is—in Qutb's view—all encompassing and all wonderful, whatever is non-Muslim (or Jahiliyyah) is "evil and corrupt," and its existence anywhere intolerable to true Muslims.[Note 3] In preaching and promoting Islam, for example, it is very important not to demean Islam by "searching for resemblances" between Islam and the "filth" and "the rubbish heap of the West."[20]

According to Qutb, to ignore this fact and attempt to introduce elements of socialism or nationalism into Islam or the Muslim community (as Nasser's Arab Socialist Union government was doing in Egypt at the time), is against Islam. This is illustrated by the fact that in the early days of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad did not make appeals to ethnic or class loyalty. Though these crowd-pleasing appeals would have undoubtedly shortened the thirteen years of hardship Muhammad had to endure while calling unresponsive Arabs to Islam, "God did not lead His Prophet on this course. ... This was not the way,"[21] and so must not be the way now.

To restore Islam on earth and free Muslims from "jahili society, jahili concepts, jahili traditions and jahili leadership,"[15] Qutb preaches that a vanguard (tali'a) be formed modeling itself after the original Muslims, the companions (Sahaba) of Muhammad. Qutb believes these Muslims successfully vanquished Jahiliyyah principally in two ways:

• They cut themselves off from the Jahiliyyah—i.e. they ignored the learning and culture of non-Muslim groups (Greeks, Romans, Persians, Christians or Jews), and separated themselves from their old non-Muslim friends and family.[22]
• They looked to the Qur'an for orders to obey, not as "learning and information" or solutions to problems.[23]

Following these principles the vanguard will fight Jahiliyyah with a twofold approach: preaching, and "the movement" (jama'at). Preaching will persuade people to become true Muslims, while the movement will abolish "the organizations and authorities of the Jahili system"[24] by "physical power and Jihaad".[24] Foremost amongst these organizations and people to be removed is the "political power" which rests on a complex, "interrelated ideological, racial, class, social and economic support,"[25] but ultimately includes "the whole human environment."[26] Force is necessary, Qutb explains, because it is naive to expect "those who have usurped the authority of God" to give up their power without a fight.[27]

Remaining aloof from Jahiliyyah and its values and culture, but preaching and forcibly abolishing authority within it, the vanguard will travel the road, gradually growing from a cell of "three individuals" to ten, from ten to a hundred, until there are thousands, and blossom into a truly Islamic community. The community may start in the homeland of Islam but this is by no means "the ultimate objective of the Islamic movement of Jihad."[26] Jihad must not merely be defensive, it must be offensive,[28] and its objective must be to carry Islam "throughout the earth to the whole of mankind."[26]

True Muslims should maintain a "sense of supremacy" and "superiority,"[29] on the road of renewal, but it is important that they also prepare themselves for a "life until death in poverty, difficulty, frustration, torment and sacrifice",[30] and even to brace themselves for possibility of death by torture at the hands of Jahiliyyah's sadistic, arrogant, mischievous, criminal and degraded people.[31] Qutb ends his book with quotes from "surat Al-Burooj" from the Quran, an example of persecution against Muslims and enjoining modern-day Muslims to endure the same or worse tortures for the sake of carrying out God's will. After all, "this world is not a place of reward"; the believer's reward is in heaven.[32]

Two of Qutb's major influences were the medieval Islamic scholar Ibn Taymiya, and contemporary British Indian (later Pakistani) Islamist writer Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi. Both used the historical term jahiliyya to describe contemporary events in the Muslim world.[34]

Two other concepts popularized by Qutb in Milestones also came from Maududi:

• al-'ubudiyya, or worship, (which is performed not only by praying and adoring but by obeying); and
• al-hakimiyya, or sovereignty, (which is God's over all the earth and violated when His law, the sharia, is not obeyed).[35]

Qutb's precept—that sharia law is essential to Islam. and that any self-described "Muslim" ruler who ignores it in favor of man-made laws is actually a non-Muslim who should be fought and overthrown—came from a fatwa of Ibn Taymiya.[36] According to Quran chapter 5, verse 44, whoever judge by any law other than the law of Allah is non-muslim.

Qutb's intense dislike of the West and ethnic nationalism notwithstanding, some of his ideas have been compared to European fascism (with religion replacing race or ethnicity in its ideology), such as:[37] [Note 4] [39][40]

• the decline of contemporary Western civilization and "infertility" of democracy;
• inspiration from an earlier golden age and desire to restore its glory with an all-encompassing (totalitarian) social, political, and economic system;
• belief in malice of foreign and Jewish conspiracies;
• violent revolution to expel alien influences and to re-establish the power and international supremacy of the nation/community;[41]

Although fascism made some impact among anti-British Arab Muslims before, during, and after World War II,[42] the influence of fascist thinkers (particularly French fascist Alexis Carrel) in Qutb's work is disputed.[43]

The centrality of an Islamic 'vanguard' (Arabic: tali'a) in Qutb's political program also suggests influence from Lenin's key concept of the vanguard party.[Note 5]

The claim that the entire world was jahiliyya meant that mainstream Muslims were not actually Muslims, which meant they were potentially guilty of apostasy, a capital crime in traditional sharia. Critics allege that Qutb's Milestones helped to open up a Pandora's box of takfir (by declaring that the Muslim world was actually non-Muslim and so many Muslims not actually Muslims, and potentially guilty of apostasy) that has brought serious internal strife, in particular terrorism and the killing of civilians, to the Muslim world in recent decades.[48][49]

Qutb repeatedly proclaims that "serving human lords" is intolerable and is a practice Islam "has come to annihilate."[11] Christians and Jews are guilty of it since they give priests and rabbis "the authority to make laws" and "it is clear that obedience to laws and judgments is a sort of worship."[11] Because of this these religions are actually polytheist, not monotheist.[Note 6] Qutb quotes the Quran (9:31):[51]

“They have taken their rabbis and priests as lords other than Allah, and the Messiah, son of Mary; and they were commanded to worship none but One Allah. There is no God but He, glory be to Him above what they associate with Him!”[12]

Qutb asserted that "World Jewry" was and is engaged in conspiracies whose "purpose" is:

to eliminate all limitations, especially the limitations imposed by faith and religion, so that Jews may penetrate into body politics of the whole world and then may be free to perpetuate their evil designs. At the top of the list of these activities is usury, the aim of which is that all the wealth of mankind end up in the hands of Jewish financial institutions which run on interest.[52]

He also alleged that the West had a centuries-long "enmity toward Islam" which led it to create a "well-thought-out scheme ... to demolish the structure of Muslim society."[53] At the same time, "the Western world realizes that Western civilization is unable to present any healthy values for the guidance of mankind,"[16] and "the American people blush" with shame when confronted with the "immoralities" and "vulgarity" of their own country in comparison with the superiority of Islam's "logic, beauty, humanity and happiness".[20]

Olivier Roy has described Qutb's attitude as one of "radical contempt and hatred" for the West,[54] and complains that the propensity of Muslims like Qutb to blame problems on outside conspiracies "is currently paralyzing Muslim political thought. For to say that every failure is the devil's work is the same as asking God, or the devil himself (which is to say these days the Americans), to solve one's problems."[55]

Other questions involve Qutb's ideas of sharia and freedom.

Qutb's ideology is premised upon sharia law and its application to every aspect of life. He does not explain or illustrate how any specific statutes are better or different from man-made law — evidence to support assertions in Ma'alim fi al-Tariq is limited to scriptural quotations — but does assure readers sharia is "without doubt ... perfect in the highest degree",[56] and will free humanity from servitude to other men.

Some, such as scholar Khaled Abou El Fadl, have questioned Qutb's understanding of sharia, and his assumptions that sharia is not only perfect but accessible to mortals in its completeness.[57] While Islamic scholars of sharia traditionally have two decade-long training from schools such as Al Azhar, all Qutb's formal post-secondary schooling was secular.[58]

Qutb's assertion that the Qur'an should be approached as a source of "instruction for obedience and action" (following the fundamentalist prescription that "the Quran is our law,"[59][60][61]) comes under modernist criticism that of 6000 verses in the Quran only 245 concern legislation, and only 90 of those concern constitutional, civil, financial or economic matters.[62] Qutb's general assertion that the sharia is all-encompassing — a "complete way of life" with rules on everything from "administration and justice" to "principles of art and science" — is challenged by the Modernist claim that sharia law (as revealed to man) is notably short on solutions to modern problems such as traffic control, price stability, or health care.[63]

Qutb explains that sharia law needs no human authorities for citizens to obey and thus frees humanity from "servitude" because

• God's law has "no vagueness or looseness"[64] which would necessitate judges to settle disputes over interpretation, and
• no need for enforcement authorities because "as soon as a command is given, the heads are bowed, and nothing more is required for implementation (of sharia) except to hear it."[65]

This uniquely free socioeconomic system not only frees Muslims to be true Muslims, but explains why offensive jihad to "establish the sovereignty of God", i.e. true Islam, "throughout the world"[28] would not constitute aggression towards non-Muslims but rather "a movement to wipe out tyranny" and to introduce "true freedom" to mankind,[28] since even the most contented and patriotic non-Muslim living in a non-Muslim state is still obeying a human authority. These non-Muslims must be freed by Islamic jihad, just as the non-Muslims of Persia or Byzantium were freed by invading Muslim armies in the 7th Century AD.

The problem alleged here is that while true Muslims who believe in sharia law might in theory obey it without any state or police to enforce it, non-Muslims would have no such incentive, since by definition they do not consider Islamic law to be divine. However, if obedience were not voluntary, offensive jihad would lose its rationale as a movement to wipe out tyranny.

Qutb's political philosophy has been described as an attempt to instantiate a complex and multilayer eschatological vision, partly grounded in a counter-hegemonic anti-western view of Islamic 'universalism'.[66]

• Berman, Paul (2003). Terror and Liberalism. W.W. Norton.
• Haddad, Yvonne Y. (1983). "Sayyid Qutb: ideologue of Islamic revival". In Esposito, J. (ed.). Voices of the Islamic Revolution.
• Hasan, S. Badrul (1982). Syed Qutb Shaheed. International Islamic Publishers.
• Kepel, Gilles (2002). Jihad : the trail of political Islam. Jon Rothschild (trans.). Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-1-86064-253-1.
• Kepel, Gilles (1985). The Prophet and Pharaoh: Muslim Extremism in Egypt. Jon Rothschild (trans.). Al Saqi. ISBN 0-86356-118-7.
• Moussalli, Ahmad S. (1992). Radical Islamic Fundamentalism: the Ideological and Political Discourse of Sayyid Qutb. American University of Beirut.
• Mura, Andrea (2014). "[The Inclusive Dynamics of Islamic Universalism: From the Vantage Point of Sayyid Qutb's Critical Philosophy]". Comparative Philosophy. 5 (1): 29–54.
• Qutb, Sayyid (1981). Milestones. The Mother Mosque Foundation. (paging in notes is from this edition)
• Qutb, Sayyid (2007). Milestones (PDF). Maktabah Publishers. Retrieved 11 December 2020.
• Sivan, Emmanuel (1985). Radical Islam : Medieval Theology and Modern Politics. Yale University Press.