Muhammad Qutb
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Muhammad Qutb, (Arabic: محمد قطب ), (IPA pronunciation: ['kʌtəb]), was an Islamist author and teacher best known as the younger brother of the Egyptian Islamist thinker Sayyid Qutb, and a supporter and promoter of his older brother's ideas after his brother was executed by the Egyptian government.
Muhammad Qutb was the second eldest of five children born sometime after 1906 in the Upper Egyptian village of Musha near Asyut. Little is known in English sources about his upbringing and education but it is known that he lived with his famous brother, their two sisters and mother in Helwan near Cairo for several years starting in 1926. He was arrested a few days before his brother July 29, 1965 for his alleged co-leadership along with his brother in a plot[1] to kill leading political and cultural figures in Egypt and overthrow the government. He was released from prison in 1972 [2] and fled to Saudi Arabia. There he edited and published his brother Sayyid's books[3] and taught as a professor of Islamic Studies at (according to different sources) either Mecca's Umm al-Qura University, and/or King Abdel-Aziz University in Jeddah, and that either Osama bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahiri (al Qaeda's #2 and leading theorist), was a student. [4]
In addition to making available his brother's work, M. Qutb worked to advance his ideas by "smoothing away" differences between his brother's radical supporters and more conservative Muslims, particularly other members of the Brethren. Muhammad took a less literal interpretation of his brother's famous statement that the Muslim world and Muslim governments were jahiliyya (not Muslim). He denied that the country that had given him refuge was jahiliyya, [5] and in 1975 came out publicly against Takfir, or judging self-proclaimed Muslims as unbelievers. [6]
Muhammad was an author in his own right and his writings are widespread in the Arab world and nearly as prolific as his brother's. Jahiliyya in the Twenty-First Century is perhaps his best-known work,[7] and gained notoriety as a supposed terrorist handbook (along with his brother's Milestones) when the government claimed to find the two in police searches of plotters homes and enivrons.[8]
Another very popular work Islam: the Misunderstood Religion has been called a classic example of contemporary Muslim apologetics [9] and even become an object of ridicule from some Western anti-Islamists for its errors and allegedly outrageous claims. [10]
[edit] Books
- Shubuhāt Hawla al-Islām (literally "Misconceptions about Islam") (Islam: The Misunderstood Religion) ISBN 0-686-18500-5
- Dirāsāt fī al-nafs al-insānīyah.[1963?] (Studies in human psychology) BP166.73 .Q8 Arab
- Hal nahnu Muslimūn (Are we Muslims?) al-Qāhirah : Dār al-Shurūq, 1980, ISBN 977-705-981-7
- al-Insān bayna al-māddīyah wa-al-Islām. (Man between the Material World and Islam) B825 .Q8 (Orien Arab)
- al-Sahwah al-Islāmīyah (The Islamic Resurgence)(al-Qāhirah : Maktabat al-Sunnah, 1990)
- Jahiliyat al-qarn al-`ishrin (Jahiliyya of the Twentieth Century), 292 p. ; 23 cm. al-Qahirah : Dar al-Shuruq, ; ISBN 977-733-606-3
[edit] References
- ^ Kepel, Gilles, [Muslim] Extremism in Egypt, the Prophet and Pharoh, University of California, 1985, p.39, 32
- ^ The War for Muslim Minds : Islam and the West by Giles Kepel, p.174-5
- ^ Jihad : the Trail of Political Islam by Gilles Kepel p.51],
- ^ http://gemsofislamism.tripod.com/muhammad_qutb_islam.html#intro
"Muhammad Qutb's Islam : the Misunderstood Religion, Some Frequently Asked Questions";
Osama bin Laden recommends the book "Concepts that Should be Corrected by Sheikh Muhammad Qutb," in a January 4, 2004, videotape delivered to al-Jazeera (Messages to the World, Statements of Osama bin Laden, Verso, 2005, p.229) - ^ The War for Muslim Minds : Islam and the West by Kepel, p.174-5
- ^ Sivan, Emmanuel, Radical Islam : Medieval Theology and Modern Politics, Yale University, 1985, p.111
Kepel, Gilles, Le Prophete et Pharaon, Editions Le Decouverte, 1984, p.61-64 - ^ The War for Muslim Minds : Islam and the West by Kepel, p.174-5
- ^ Muslim Extremism in Egypt, the Prophet and Pharoh by Giles Kepel, p.34)
- ^ The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists, by Khaled Abou El Fadl, Harper San Francisco, 2005, p.298
- ^ http://gemsofislamism.tripod.com/muhammad_qutb_islam.html Muhammad Qutb's Islam : the Misunderstood Religion, Some Frequently Asked Questions
