A Quiet Revolution (18 page)

in English. And in the United States his works would find readers among both immigrant and African American Muslim audiences. Thus in the
‌

U.S. his books were “highly recommended to members of the Muslim Student Association,” a group whose members were preponderantly im- migrant, and they would also be popular “among members of the Amer- ican Muslim Mission (popularly known as Black Muslims)” who, Haddad explains, found Qutb’s “‘evangelical’ rhetoric and Quranic centeredness strongly supportive of their worldview as they [sought] to transform American society and to convert others to the faith of Islam.”
22

Born in a village in southern Egypt in
1906
, Qutb pursued his col-

lege education in Cairo, where he attended not the religious institution of al-Azhar but the secular teacher-training college, Dar al-Ulum. Here he came under the influence of Abbas Mahmud al-Aqqad, a prominent Egyptian intellectual and literary figure noted for his openness to the strongly pro-Westernizing currents in Egypt of that era. Al-Aqqad fled to the Sudan in the early nineteen-forties when the Germans appeared to be advancing on Egypt, fearing that he would suffer reprisals at their hands because of his forthright criticism of Adolf Hitler.
23
During Qutb’s years as a student he would become deeply interested in English literature, and he was a voracious reader of English writings in translation.

After graduating, Qutb worked for the Ministry of Education. Like his mentor al-Aqqad, he would become known through the first decades of his life as a literary figure, the author of books of poetry, criticism, and novellas. Among his works was an autobiographical book,
A Child from the Village
. The book, a moving evocation of village life, is also a pas- sionate plea for Egyptians to remedy the gross inequalities and injustices rampant in their society and which the book vividly portrays. The work is dedicated to Taha Husain, author of the classic autobiography
Al- Ayam
(The Days) and a writer who had been severely criticized by some in Egypt for what they perceived to be his overly pro-Westernizing views.

Appearing in
1946
,
A Child from the Village
was among the last

books Qutb published that were primarily literary and non-Islamist. His book
Social Justice in Islam,
one of his weightiest and now most studied works, published in
1949
, marked the beginning of his turn toward Islam as the ground of his thought. It also marked the start of his steadily more emphatic turn toward Islamism. During the forties, according to Had-

dad, Qutb, “like other Egyptian intellectuals who had been enamoured with the West,” underwent a profound transformation. This came about, she wrote, “as a result of British war policies during World War II and as an aftermath of the creation of the state of Israel. The latter he per- ceived as a rejection of the rights of Arabs to self-determination and a re- jection of their equality to Western man.”
24

Through the forties Qutb grew increasingly more outspoken in his criticism of the ruling establishment in Egypt, including King Farouk, and he also began to be deeply critical of the United States, particularly, as the Qutb scholar Adnan Musallam explains, as a result of President Truman’s support for Jewish immigration to Palestine. “At last,” Qutb wrote in response to Truman’s position, “the conscience of the United States” had been uncovered. The Palestinian problem had shown “that this ‘conscience’ gambles with the fate and rights of humans in order to buy a few votes in the election.” Americans, Qutb continued, like other Westerners, suffered from a “rotten conscience” (
damir muta‘affin
). “Their conscience is all derived from the same source—namely, the ma- terialistic civilization that has no heart or conscience, and which hears nothing but the sounds of machines.” Declaring that “I hate and despise” all Westerners—“the British, the French, the Dutch and now the Amer- icans who were at one time trusted by many”—Qutb adds, “I hate and despise just as much those Egyptians and Arabs who continue to trust Western conscience.”
25

In
1948
, sent on a study mission abroad by the Ministry of Educa-

tion, Qutb left for America—some now speculating that he had been de- liberately dispatched on this trip in the hope that exposure to the West would moderate his views.
26
Qutb attended the Colorado College of Ed- ucation, graduating with an M.A. degree in
1951
. He then returned to Egypt, his American experience evidently having entrenched rather than dissipated his deeply negative views of the United States.

Qutb’s book
Social Justice in Islam
was published in Egypt while he was abroad, and it had been well received, particularly by the Muslim Brothers, who initiated cordial relations with him on his return. Qutb had dedicated the book to “the youngsters whom I see in my fantasy coming to restore this religion anew as it began fighting . . . for the cause of Allah by killing and getting killed, believing in the bottom of their

hearts that the glory belongs to Allah, to his Prophet and to the believ- ers.” The Brotherhood took this dedication—mistakenly, according to Qutb—to be a reference to themselves.
27

Thus began Qutb’s relationship with the Brotherhood. Through the early fifties Qutb continued to write prolifically, publishing several books as well as numerous articles, some of which were published in the Brotherhood’s journals. One article denounced the religious establish- ment of al-Azhar, which, he maintained, was failing in its task of reviv- ing the “Islamic idea” and developing it through studies and research and, in this way, preparing for the “practical application” of this Islamic

idea “in the light of present realities.” Qutb was, to begin with, on good terms with Nasser and the officers of the coup of
1952
, and he even served as consultant to them for some six months. By this point, though, he was already beginning to distance himself from them, and in
1954
, following the Brotherhood’s attempt (according to the government) to assassinate Nasser, Qutb was among the Brotherhood members arrested and im- prisoned. Thus began the years of imprisonment and persecution under Nasser that would culminate, as already described, in Qutb’s execution.

Scholars who have combed through Qutb’s writings for passages about women’s rights and roles concur that Qutb adamantly advocated policies that were systematically restrictive and confining to women. He maintained, as Roxanne Euben describes in her study of Qutb, that women’s responsibility to society was “synonymous with her biological function in life.” Being the caretakers of the family and children, ac- cording to Qutb, defined woman’s “identity, importance, and dignity.”
28
Similarly, Lamia Shehadeh points out that although Qutb un- doubtedly revolutionized Islamic thought by incorporating into his views ideas of individual liberty and freedom from servitude as fundamental el- ements of the ideal Islamic society and thus of the society that the Mus- lim vanguard must struggle to achieve, when it came to women he evidently had no hesitation in confining them to “permanent servitude to their husbands and families.” Qutb declared that all human beings “are equally God’s slaves, no one has the right to exercise authority over another.” Nevertheless, Qutb categorically affirmed the “wife’s subjuga-

tion to her husband.”
29

Moreover, like al-Banna, as Shehadeh also points out, Qutb called

for new and comprehensive rereadings and reinterpretations of Islam, rereadings that would be responsive to the needs of the day. And, again like al-Banna, Qutb maintained that individuals were capable of inter- preting the texts “without any authoritative human guide, albeit after having mastered the disciplines of linguistics and grammar among oth- ers.” These views, and Qutb’s call for the reinterpretation of the Quran, reflected both his position that “Islam is eternally valid” and conse- quently capable of accommodating changing times and societies, and his concomitantly flexible approach to issues of tradition and jurisprudence, which he viewed as open to reinterpretation and redefinition. But re- garding women, Shehadeh points out, Qutb was content to keep them— indeed, even committed to keeping them—“chained to their past.”

Qutb’s views of women and their roles were not characteristic of the positions that would be taken by many of the Brotherhood’s leaders as the Brotherhood’s position on women evolved through the seventies and after, as I discuss in Chapter
6
.

Qutb never married, which was unusual for men in Egyptian soci- ety in that era. Nevertheless, women in various capacities—and in par- ticular his mother and sisters—were undoubtedly important in his life. Qutb’s account of his mother and of the women in the village in which he grew up, in his autobiography, is informed by a deep sense of empathy and a clear sensitivity to the difficulties of life that fall particularly heavily on women—to the point that his later rigidity regarding women’s status seems surprising and suggests that he had become distinctly less empa- thetic and more extreme in his views of women over time. In Qutb’s adult life, his sisters, Amina and Hamida, no less than his brother, Muhammad, worked as his assistants, and they too were activists alongside him in his

Islamist work. Amina and Hamida were both also arrested, as was Mu- hammad, within days of Qutb’s second arrest in
1965
. Muhammad Qutb, released from prison by Sadat in
1972
, settled in Saudi Arabia, where he taught at a university and edited and published his brother’s books, seek- ing in his own work to reconcile differences between the views of the Brotherhood and those of the Wahhabism of his adopted country.
30

Also arrested in
1965
was Zainab al-Ghazali, the “unsung mother” of the Brotherhood. Al-Ghazali in every sense and at every point in her life

might be said to have blazed her own path to power and influence. Born in
1917
in a village in the Egyptian delta, she came from a well-to-do fam- ily which traced its lineage to Umar Ibn al-Khattab, one of the four caliphs of early Islam revered by Sunnis. Her father was a cotton mer- chant who had studied at al-Azhar and who devoted his spare time to touring the country and preaching in mosques and teaching the “Islamic call and religion.”
31
Al-Ghazali’s father encouraged her to become a

Muslim leader. “He always used to say to me that, God willing, I would be an Islamic leader,” al-Ghazali wrote. In particular, he held up for her the example of Nusaybah bint Ka‘b al-Mazini, a woman known for her prowess as warrior, famed for wielding her sword to devastating effect in a number of the battles of early Islam.

While al-Banna and Qutb had continued with their studies through college, al-Ghazali’s formal schooling ended with secondary school. At the age of sixteen she joined the Egyptian Feminist Union, an organiza- tion founded in the
1920
s by Huda Sha‘rawi, the upper-class Egyptian

woman who was the most prominent feminist figure of the first decades of the twentieth century. Shortly afterward, however, al-Ghazali with- drew from the organization. “With my Islamic upbringing,” she ex- plained years later to an interviewer, Sha‘rawi’s call for the “liberation of women” had not seemed to her to be the “right way for Muslim women.” Women needed to be “called to Islam,” al-Ghazali felt. Conse- quently, Sha‘rawi’s organization seemed to her “misguided” because it failed to recognize that, “as all rights derived from Islam, there is no ‘woman question’ distinct from the emancipation of humanity, which is possible only through the restoration of Islamic law as sovereign.” To put into effect her own perspective, al-Ghazali shortly afterward, aged eighteen, founded her own organization, the Muslim Women’s Associ- ation (Jamaat al-Sayyidat al-Muslimat).

A few months later, after delivering a lecture in
1939
for the Mus-

lim Sisters at the headquarters of the Brotherhood in ‘Ataba Square, in Cairo, Hasan al-Banna invited her to take charge of the Sisters division of his organization. This would have entailed incorporating her associ- ation (“the newborn of which I was so proud”) into the Brotherhood. After briefly discussing the matter with the General Assembly of the as- sociation she had founded, al-Ghazali declined the invitation. Al-Banna,

who was known for a style of leadership that “brooked little dissent,” was angered by her response, and to appease him al-Ghazali informed him that although the group insisted on retaining its independence it would always support the Brotherhood. This failed to satisfy him. Time passed, al-Ghazali writes, continuing her account, and the events of
1948
took place: that is, the government issued orders to dissolve the Brotherhood, and many Brothers were thrown into prison. On the morning following the order to dissolve the Brotherhood, she continues, “I found myself sitting at my desk with my head in my hands, weeping bitterly. I felt that Hasan al-Banna was right, and that he was the leader to whom allegiance is due from all Muslims.” She then sent a message with her brother to al- Banna which read, in part: “My Lord, Imam Hasan al-Banna: Zainab al- Ghazali al-Jabili approaches you today as a slave who has nothing but her worship of God and her total devotion to the service of God’s call. . . . Waiting for your orders and instructions, my lord the imam.”

Shortly afterward they met at the Association of Muslim Youth, where al-Ghazali was to deliver a lecture.
32
As they went up the stairs to- gether she said, “By God, I pledge allegiance to you, to work to establish the state of Islam. The least I can offer you to achieve it is my blood, and the Muslim Women’s Association with its name.” He said, “I accept your pledge of allegiance. The Muslim Women’s Association may remain as it is.”
33

Soon after, even as al-Ghazali was striving to mediate between al- Banna and Mustafa Pasha al-Nahhas, Egypt’s former prime minister, al- Banna was assassinated. Besides grieving over this al-Ghazali was soon contending with the government’s order to dissolve her association, an order she successfully contested.