Ma'alim fi-l-Tariq

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Milestones

Author	Sayyid Qutb
Original title (if not in English)	Ma'alim fi-l-Tariq
Country	Egypt
Language	Arabic
Publisher	Kazi Publications
Released	1964
Media Type	Paperback
ISBN	1567444946

Ma'alim fi-l-Tariq or Milestones (Arabic: معالم في الطريق), first published in 1964, is a book by Egyptian Islamist author Sayyid Qutb in which he lays out a plan and makes a call to action to re-create the Muslim world on strictly Qu'ranic grounds, casting off what Qutb calls Jahiliyyah, the pre-Islamic ignorance that the world has lapsed to.

Ma'alim fi-l-Tariq is probably Qutb's most famous and influential work and one of the most influential Islamist tracts written. It is also the most important ingredient making up the ideology of Qutbism. Commentators have both praised Milestones as a ground-breaking, inspirational work by a hero and a martyr,^[1] and reviled it as a prime example of unreasoning entitlement, self-pity, paranoia, and hatred that has been a major influence on radical Islamist terrorism.[[1]]

The title Ma'alim fi-l-Tariq translates into English as "Milestones Along the Way" or "Milestones Along the Road." English translations of the book are usually entitled simply "Milestones;" the book is also sometimes referred to as "Signposts."

Contents 1 History 2 Contents 2.1 Sharia 2.2 Islamic vanguard 3 Influences 3.1 Islamic 3.2 Non-Islamic 4 Criticism 4.1 Takfir 4.2 Milestones and Non-Muslims 4.2.1 Christians and Jews as Polytheists 4.2.2 Western and Jewish Conspiracies 4.3 Milestones and Islam 4.3.1 Sharia 4.3.2 Freedom 5 Notes 6 References 7 External links

[edit] History

See also: Sayyid Qutb#Life and public career

Ma'alim fi-l-Tariq marked the culmination of Qutb's evolution from modernist author and critic, to Islamist activist and writer, and finally to Islamist revolutionary and theoretician. It was written in prison where Qutb spent 10 years under charges of political conspiracy against Egypt's Nasser regime and first published in 1964.

Less than a year after its publication, Qutb was again arrested and brought to trial in Egypt under charges of conspiring against the state. Excerpts from the book were used to incriminate Qutb and he was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging in 1966.^[2] His death elevated his status to Shaheed or martyr in the eyes of many Muslims. Milestones became a bestseller and widely distributed across the Arab speaking world. To date, close to 2,000 editions of the work are said to have been published.^[3]

[edit] Contents

In his short (12 chapters, 160 pages) book, Qutb seeks to set out "milestones" or guiding markers along a road that will lead to the revival of Islam from its current "extinction."

[edit] Sharia

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" (p.11, 19)) 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. (p.9)^[4] Following the Sharia is not just important but a defining attribute of Muslims, more necessary than belief itself (p.89), because "according to the Shari'ah, 'to obey' is 'to worship'." This means Muslims must not only refrain from worshipping 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 secular legal statute — "is outside God's religion, although he may claim to profess this religion." (p.60)

Qutb sees Sharia as much more than a code of religious or public laws. It is a complete "way of life ... based on submission to God alone," (p.82) crowding out anything non-Islamic. Its rules range from "belief" to "administration and justice" to "principles of art and science." (p.107) Being God's law, Sharia is as much a part "of that universal law which governs the entire universe, ... as accurate and true as any of the laws known as the 'laws of nature,'" like gravity or electricity. (p.88, also p.45-46)

"The establishment of God's law on earth" will lead to "blessings" falling "on all mankind." (p.90) Sharia is "the only guarantee against any kind of discord in life. " (p.89) 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," (p.90) will be revealed "in an easy manner." Its "harmony between human life and the universe" will approach the perfection of heaven itself. (p.91)

Just as Sharia is all encompassing and all wonderful, what is non-Muslim (or Jahiliyyah) is "evil and corrupt," and its existence anywhere intolerable to true Muslims. "Islam cannot accept or agree to a situation which is half-Islam and half-Jahiliyyah ... The mixing and co-existence of the truth and falsehood is impossible." (p.130) "We will not change our own values and concepts either more or less to make a bargain with this jahili society. Never!" (p.21) 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." (p.139)

According to Qutb, to ignore this fact and attempt to introduce elements of socialism or nationalism into Islam or the Muslim community (as Egypt's Arab Socialist Union government was doing at the time) is against Islam. Qutb stresses that in the early days of Islam, Muhammad did not make appeals to ethnic or class loyalty. Though these crowd-pleasing appeals would have undoubtedly shortened the thirteen years of "tortures" the Prophet had to endure while calling unresponsive Arabs to Islam, "God did not lead His Prophet (pbuh) on this course. ... This was not the way," (p.25-27) and so must not be the way now. Only God's law can bring justice.

[edit] Islamic vanguard

To restore Islam on earth and free Muslims from "jahili society, jahili concepts, jahili traditions and jahili leadership," (p.21) Qutb preaches that a vanguard (tali'a) be formed modeling itself after the original Muslims, the "Companions of the Prophet" (Sahaba). These Muslims successfully vanquished Jahiliyyah (Qutb believes) principally for two reasons:

• 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. (p.16, 20)

• They looked to the Qur'an for orders to obey, not as "learning and information" or solutions to problems. (p.17-18)

Following these principles the vanguard will fight Jahiliyyah with a two-fold approach: preaching, and "the movement" (jama'at). Preaching will persuade people to become true Muslims, while the movement will remove by "physical power and Jihaad for abolishing the organizations and authorities of the Jahili system." (p.55) Foremost amongst these organizations and people is the "political power which rests on a complex yet interrelated ideological, racial, class, social and economic support," (p.59) but ultimately includes "the whole human environment." (p.72) 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. (p.58-9)

Remaining aloof from Jahiliyyah and its values and culture, but preaching and removing obstacles within it, the vanguard will travel the road, gradually growing from a cell of "three individuals ... to ten, the ten to a hundred, the hundred to a thousand, and the thousand ... to twelve thousand," and blossom into a truly Islamic community. The community may start in the "homeland of Islam" but this is by no means "the ulimate objective of the Islamic movement of Jihad." (p.72) Jihad must not merely be defensive, it must be offensive, (p.62) and its objective must be to carry Islam "throughout the earth to the whole of mankind." (p.72)

True Muslims should maintain a "sense of supremacy" and "superiority," (p.141) 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" (p.157), and even to brace themselves for possibility of death by torture at the hands of Jahiliyyah's sadistic, "arrogant, mischievous, criminal and degraded people." (p.150) Qutb ends his book describing the gruesome burning and dismemberment (he believes) many Muslims will be subject to. (p.150, 157)

[edit] Influences

[edit] Islamic

Two of Qutb's major influences were the medieval Islamic scholar Ibn Taymiya, and contemporary Indian Islamist writer Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi. Both used the historical term jahiliyya to describe contemporary events in the Muslim world. ^[5]

Two other concepts Qutb popularizes 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).^[6]

Qutb's precept that Sharia law is essential to Islam and 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 come from a fatwa of Ibn Taymiya.^[7]

[edit] Non-Islamic

Qutb's intense dislike of the West not withstanding, some of his ideas are strongly reminiscent of European fascism:

• the decline of contemporary Western civilization and "infertility" of democracy,
• inspiration from an earlier golden age and desire to restore its glory,
• victimhood from malicious foreign and Jewish conspiracies, and
• revolution to expel alien influences and reestablish the power and international domination of the nation/community,

Fascism having made some impact among anti-British Arab Muslims before, during, and after World War II.^[8] The influence of particular fascist thinkers (particularly French fascist Alexis Carrel) in Qutb's work is disputed.^[9]

[edit] Criticism

Qutb's book was originally a bestseller and became more popular as the Islamic revival strengthened. He has been hailed as "a matchless writer, ... one of the greatest thinkers of contemporary Islamic thought,"^[10] and compared him to Western political philosopher John Locke^[11] by Islamists.

Outside the Islamist community, however Ma'alim fi-l-Tariq has been criticized by Muslims for the takfir of "jahili" Muslims, and by non-Muslims for its accusations against same, particularly following the terrorist attacks of September 11th.

[edit] Takfir

See also: Qutbism#Takfir

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 (though rarely enforced). Critics allege that Qutb's Milestones helped to open up a Pandora’s box of takfir (declaring a Muslim to be an infidel) that has brought serious internal strife, in particular terrorism, to the Muslim world in recent decades. ^[12]

[edit] Milestones and Non-Muslims

Among the complaints by some non-Muslims are that Qutb's attacks on non-Muslims are contradictory, unsubstantiated, and even hypocritical. ^[13]

[edit] Christians and Jews as Polytheists

Qutb repeatedly proclaims that "serving human lords" is intolerable and is a practice Islam "has come to annihilate." (p.60) Christians and Jews are guilty of it since they (according to Qutb) give priests and rabbis "the authority to make laws" and "it is clear that obedience to laws and judgments is a sort of worship." [p.60] Because of this, Qutb says, these religions are actually polytheist, not monotheist.

Yet for the last decade and a half of his life (1953-1966) Qutb himself belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization founded on almost military-like structure where "obedience to laws and judgments" of its founder was at least as severe as nearly any Christian or Jewish congregation or denomination. Before his assassination, "Supreme Guide" Sheikh Hassan al Banna, had the power to overrule any decisions by local Brotherhood branches not to his liking. ^[14]

[edit] Western and Jewish Conspiracies

Critics have pointed out what one called Qutb's "radical contempt and hatred" for what he called the "backward," a "rubbish heap ... filth ... hollow and worthless" (p.139, 136), West,^[15] and belief in Jewish conspiracies, complaining 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."^[16]

• Qutb claimed "World Jewry" was and is engaged in tricks and schemes 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. (p.110-111)

• He alleged 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," (p.116) At the same time, "the Western world realizes that Western civilization is unable to present any healthy values for the guidance of mankind," (p.7) 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" (p.139)

Qutb offered no evidence in Milestones to support these incendiary allegations.

[edit] Milestones and Islam

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

[edit] Sharia

Qutb pinned his ideology on the completeness and transformational power of Sharia law. Sharia is not only perfect, accessible to mortals and essential for the existence of Islam on earth, it frees humanity from "servitude" to other men because its divine perfection is such that it requires no human authorities to administer or enforce it.

Yet nowhere in Milestones does Qutb ever explain or illustrate how Sharia law is better than man-made law, or how Sharia will be distinguished from profane law on modern-day issues not dealt with in the Qur'an or hadith. Qutb simply reassures readers that Sharia is "without doubt ... perfect in the highest degree." (p.11) As a result, some question whether Qutb's faith in Sharia as an abstract force of salvation is related to his lack of in-depth knowledge of it.^[17] While Islamic scholars of Shariah traditionally have two decade-long training from schools such as Al Azhar, all Qutb's formal schooling was secular.^[18] More generally, Qutb seeks to apply the Qu'ran and Sharia to every aspect of society, but the guidance in the Qu'ran for many specific modern problems is general at best, leading to disputes even among Qutbists as to what exactly Sharia should dictate.

[edit] Freedom

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" (p.85) 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 Shariah) except to hear it." (p.32)

This uniquely free socio-economic system not only frees Muslims to be true Muslims, but explains why offensive jihad to "establish the sovereignty of God ... throughout the world" (p.62) is not aggression but "a movement to wipe out tyranny and to introduce true freedom to mankind." (p.62) All non-Muslims in non-Muslim countries, no matter how content or loyal to their country, are in "servitude to man" and must be freed by Islamic jihad, just as the non-Muslims of Persia or Byzantium were freed by invading Muslim armies in the 700s AD.

The problem here, according to critics, is that while completely voluntary obedience of Sharia by Muslims may be more than a little utopian, voluntary obedience by non-Muslims is absurd. Non-Muslims by definition do not think Islamic law is divine, yet reverence for it is given as the reason why it will require no enforcement, which in turn is the reason Sharia would free everyone from servitude, and the justification for offensive jihad against non-Muslim lands. "Qutb on Politics: Racial Equality and Freedom"

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Haddad, Yvonne Y. (1983). “Sayyid Qutb: ideologue of Islamic revival”, Esposito, J.: Voices of the Islamic Revolution.
• Hasan, S. Badrul (1982). Syed Qutb Shaheed. International Islamic Publishers.
• Kepel, Gilles (1985). The Prophet and Pharaoh: Muslim Extremism in Egypt. 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.
• Qutb, Sayyid (1981). Milestones. The Mother Mosque Foundation.
• Sivan, Emmanuel (1985). Radical Islam : Medieval Theology and Modern Politics. Yale University Press.

[edit] External links

• Sayyid Qutb, Milestones.
• Robert Irwin, Is this the man who inspired Bin Laden? The Guardian (November 1, 2001).
• Elmer Swenson, Sayyid Qutb's Milestones.