Free Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror by Mahmood Mamdani

in a sense entirely different from Mawdudi: “A Muslim does not believe that another besides the one God can be divine, and he does not believe that another creature but himself is fit to worship him; and he does not believe that ‘sovereignty’ may apply to any of his servants.” Indeed, unlike Mawdudi’s preoccupation with the state as the true agent of change in history, Qutb’s thought is far more society centered; Reinhard Schulze has noted that “the deputy of divine sovereignty” for Qutb is “man as an individual” and “not the state, as Mawdudi saw it.”
    Sayyid Qutb began his public career in the service of the Egyptian Ministry of Education after graduating from a prestigious teacher-training college in Cairo in 1933. His first book, The Task of the Poet in Life , suggested the promise of a literary career. In 1948, Qutb was sent by the ministry on a study mission to the United States. Though the manuscript had been finished prior to his departure, Qutb’s first important book, Social Justice in Islam , was published during the time he was in America. Qutb explained his objective in the opening chapter of the book:
We have only to look to see that our social situation is as bad as it can be; it is apparent that our social conditions have no possible relation to justice; and so we turn our eyes to Europe, America or Russia, and we expect to import from there solutions to our problems … we continually cast aside all our own spiritual heritage, all our intellectual endowment, and all the solutions which might well be revealed by a glance at these things; we cast aside our fundamental principles and doctrines, and we bring in those of democracy, or socialism, or communism.
    The search for an Islamic road to modernity placed Qutb alongside al-Afghani and al-Banna as predecessors.
    Qutb returned from America in 1951, the year the Society of Muslim Brothers was legalized. An active member of the antimonarchical Wafd Party when he left for America, Qutb began cooperating with the society immediately on his return. After the 1952 revolution, Qutb was appointed cultural adviser to the Revolutionary Council and was the only civilian allowed to attend its meetings. Imprisoned by Nasser in 1954, Qutb had his letters smuggled out by his sisters and distributed widely. Published as Signposts Along the Road— also translated as Milestones —this collection of letters has achieved the status of a manifesto of contemporary radical political Islam. Released from jail in 1964, Qutb was rearrested and executed in 1966, reportedly at the insistence of Nasser.
    Qutb elaborated Mawdudi’s thought and took it to a more radical conclusion. He made a distinction between modernity and Westernization, calling for an embrace of modernity but a rejection of Westernization. Qutb also made a sharp distinction between science and ideology, arguing that modernity is made up of two types of sciences, physical and philosophical. The pursuit of material progress and the mastery of practical sciences are a divinecommand and a “collective obligation” on Muslims. Modernization through the natural sciences was fine but not through the westernizing philosophical sciences.
    Qutb’s reformulation of jihad resonated with contemporary Marxism-Leninism, both Maoist and Leninist. Echoing the Maoist distinction between ways of handling contradictions among the people and with the enemy, Qutb argued that jihad involves both persuasion and coercion, the former appropriate among friends but the latter suited to enemies. In the final analysis, only physical force will remove the political, social, and economic obstacles to the establishment of the Islamic community. The use of force to realize freedom is not a contradiction for Qutb—as, indeed, it is not for America. Islam has not only the right but also the obligation to exercise force to end slavery and realize human freedom.
Islam is a declaration of the freedom of every man or woman from