Qutb, Sayyid (sī`yĭd kŭ`təb), 1906–66, Egyptian Islamist whose critique of modern civilization and Islam provides the theoretical underpinnings for many contemporary Islamic militants. Educated in both traditional Muslim schools and the university, Qutb became a respected writer and literary critic. A conservative Muslim, he spent somewhat more than a year (1948–50) in the United States, where he reacted strongly against a society he perceived as decadent and morally degraded. Becoming increasingly radicalized in the subsequent years, he advocated the reestablishment of the caliphate and a pan-Islamic nation based on the sharia sharia, the religious law of Islam. As Islam makes no distinction between religion and life, Islamic law covers not only ritual but every aspect of life. The actual codification of canonic law is the result of the concurrent evolution of jurisprudence proper and the
..... Click the link for more information. (Islamic law). Qutb objected to any secular modern society, even a Muslim one, and joined the Muslim Brotherhood Muslim Brotherhood, officially Jamiat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun [Arab.,=Society of Muslim Brothers], religious and political organization founded (1928) in Egypt by Hasan al- Banna .
..... Click the link for more information. in 1952. The Egyptian government imprisoned him, except for two short periods, from 1954 until his execution.

Qutb's In the Shade of the Qur'an, his major work and a commentary on the Qur'an, attacks modern society for its separation of church and state and its removal of religion from much of daily life. This condition, which he asserts is an outgrowth of limitations and distortions inherent in Judaism and Christianity, threatens Islam from both without and within, and reduces human life to a dark state similar to that before Muhammad received the Qur'an. To restore "true" Islam and revive world civilization Qutb calls for a jihad by a vanguard of Muslims who are willing to suffer martyrdom, as he did when he remained in Nasser's Egypt and attacked its Pan-Arabist secularism (see Pan-Arabism Pan-Arabism, general term for the modern movement for political unification among the Arab nations of the Middle East. Since the Ottoman Turks rose to power in the 14th cent.
..... Click the link for more information. ). His other works include Social Justice and Islam (1949, rev. tr. 2000) and Milestones (1964, rev. tr. 1991). Qutb's works have been extremely influential on militant Islamic radicals in the succeeding decades, who have found in them justification for violence against both the West and those Muslim governments they denounce as un-Islamic.

Bibliography

See studies by A. S. Moussalli (1993, 1999) and O. Carré et al. (2003).

Qutb, Sayyid

in full Ibrahim Husayn Shadhili Sayyid Qutb

(born Oct. 9, 1906, near Asyut, Egypt—died Aug. 29, 1966, Cairo) Egyptian writer who was one of the foremost figures in modern Sunnite Islamic revivalism. He was from a family of impoverished rural notables. For most of his early life he was a schoolteacher. Originally an ardent secularist, he came, over time, to adopt many Islamist views. Following a brief period studying in the U.S. (1948–50), he became convinced of the corruption of Western secularism and on his return to Egypt joined the Muslim Brotherhood. He was at first on good terms with the revolutionary regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser but was imprisoned (1954–64) along with other Brotherhood leaders on charges of sedition. His prison years were his most productive. The brutal treatment he received convinced him that Egypt, like the West, was corrupt, and, drawing (often freely) on the work of early Muslim scholars such as Ibn Taymiyyah, he argued that much of modern Muslim society had fallen in apostasy and was, therefore, a legitimate target of jihad. He penned these ideas in several books, including Signposts in the Road (1964), which became a template for modern Sunnite militancy. Released from prison in 1964, he was soon rearrested, tried for treason, and executed.