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The Myth of Progress in the Writings of Sayyid Qutb
Religion (1997) 27, 255–266
The Myth of Progress in the Writings of Sayyid Qutb W S The idea or, as I prefer to say, the ‘myth’ of progress has been both accepted and debated in the Western world as an essential component in what we call ‘modernity’. Outside the Western world it has also functioned as one of the most effective weapons in the ideological arsenal supporting Western colonialism and imperialism. This article considers briefly how this myth has been received in the Islamic world and then, at greater length, how it was first accepted, then modified and then rejected by a man who came to be one of the ideological fathers of the current Islamic Resurgence, the ? 1997 Academic Press Limited Egyptian writer and activist, Sayyid Qutb.
Sayyid Qutb’s role in inspiring the Islamic resurgence of the last generation has been described as possibly ‘even greater than that of Ayatollah Khomeini’.1 This inspiration has operated both through his many writings and through his example as a martyr since he was executed by the Egyptian government in 1966 for his part in an alleged Islamist plot against the government.2 He is probably best known for the view, expounded in his latest writings, that to all so-called Muslim societies of his time had in fact abandoned Islam and were living a life of Jahiliyyah (barbaric ignorance). This claim was closely linked with another and even more basic feature of his later writing, his concern to purge Muslims of the effects of Western cultural influence, which he saw as the main cause of their Jahiliyyah condition. As part of this rejection of Western influence he rejected the Western ‘myth’ of progress. He came to this rejection only gradually, however, and in this article I shall trace the trajectory by which he moved from a qualified acceptance of the myth, through an effort to adapt it, to his final rejection of it. Qutb, himself, does not give a lot of prominence to this effort, indeed often it seems to happen at the level of ‘taken-for-granted’ thinking, nor to my knowledge has anyone else discussed this aspect of his thinking in any detail. Still, his rejection of this myth is an indication of how serious his effort was to free himself of Western presuppositions and the degree to which he succeeded in doing so.
The Myth of Progress, West and East In general terms, the myth of progress involves the belief that history follows a continuous course of change bringing improvement in human conditions. In its fullest and most significant form, this has meant not only physical but also moral, social and spiritual conditions. The myth arose in Europe in the eighteenth century and came to be one of the intellectual and spiritual foundations of modern Western society. It has indeed been called ‘the modern religion, or the modern substitute for religion’.3 The myth has often been combined with an organic view of the rise and fall of civilizations, giving rise to a picture of history in which successive civilizations each reach a higher point of development than the previous one. On this view, of course, modern Western civilization (or some particular form of it) represents the latest stage of progress. The myth of progress has undoubtedly facilitated the major changes of the last two centuries, since people are more likely to initiate and accept change if they feel confident it will improve their situation or that of those close to them. The myth has been called into question in this century by two world wars, the threat of nuclear 0048–721X/97/030255 + 12 $25.00/0/rl970084
? 1997 Academic Press Limited
256 W. Shepard holocaust and more recently of ecological disaster, so that it became fashionable in certain circles to disown it. I believe, though, that it has been only chastened, not dethroned, at least at the popular level.4 While Westerners no longer believe that progress is inevitable or unilinear in a simple manner, they still do fundamentally accept it and, indeed, largely take it for granted.5 This myth is one of many Western ideas that have spread to the Muslim world, as to other non-Western societies. It has undoubtedly facilitated the changes we commonly label ‘development’ or ‘modernization’, but it also has helped to justify the Western domination of ‘backward’ peoples and its acceptance by local elites allowed them to accept direct Western tutelage for a time. When in time they sought to reject overt Western tutelage, this, too, was done in the name of ‘progress’, allied to Westernderived ideologies such as nationalism and socialism. This helps to explain why the leaders of newly independent countries after the first and second world wars were often more avid cultural Westernizers than the colonial rulers before them. ‘Progress’ continues to justify the acceptance of much Western culture in the Muslim world and elsewhere, and the retreat of direct Western political rule has been accompanied by the continued and often accelerated penetration of Western culture. Acceptance of the myth of progress, however, has not been a simple matter for Muslims, for there are significant theological problems. Islam claims to be based on the last of a series of prophetic missions which began with Adam, included figures such as Moses and Jesus, and ended with Muhammad. Muhammad’s mission will not be superseded until the end of time. He was the best of human beings, his immediate followers were the best of Muslims, and Muslim society, based on his message, must be the best of societies. Muslim society after Muhammad undoubtedly made progress in physical science and technology, but fundamental moral or spiritual progress beyond the model given by the Prophet and his generation has seemed out of the question. Muslim history since Muhammad has traditionally been pictured as a long-term decline or at best as a series of declines and reforms with no overall directionality.6 That there should be significant moral progress in actual society is far from the traditional Muslim expectation and that there should be progress in basic ethic and spiritual ideas is ruled out by basic Islamic doctrine. The claim in the Western myth of progress that both of these have happened and, moreover, have happened outside the Muslim community is a profound and potentially devastating challenge to the Muslim worldview and the Muslim self-image. In the face of this challenge, there have been three general sorts of options: to reject the myth, to accept it, or to adapt it. The rejectionist position can be illustrated by Ayatollah Khomeini’s comment on the American moon landing: ‘Let them go all the way to Mars or beyond the Milky Way; they will still be deprived of true happiness, moral virtue, and spiritual advancement. . . This morality, these laws that are needed, we already possess’.7 Western technological progress is recognized, but is somewhat devalued and moral or spiritual progress is clearly denied. At the other extreme, those politicians and reformers who have sought to introduce Western ways have generally accepted the myth They have commonly taken a ‘secularist’ position which tends to narrow the scope of strictly religious matters (while usually retaining Islam as cultural heritage) and divides life into ‘religious’ and ‘non-religious’ areas, much as the West is perceived to do. ‘Progress’ is referred mainly to the ‘non-religious’ areas, which now include most forms of social and political ethics.8 Progress is denied only of the most basic elements of Muhammad’s message and these tend to be identified with the most basic elements in Christian/Western
The Myth of Progress 257 spirituality. For Muslim secularists the myth of progress in this form can be almost as taken-for-granted as it is among Westerners, with the relatively unreflective claim that what they want to do is in accord with ‘modernity’ or ‘modern civilization’9— undoubtedly two of the most powerful verbal symbols connected with the myth of progress. Arguments such as ‘we must do this to keep up with the times’ are presented as if they were obvious to all right-thinking persons. Such terms as ‘evolution’, ‘development’, and the like10 commonly signal the presence of the myth, even when it is not fully articulated, as is the case in the West. Beyond a Westernized elite, however, the moves to separate religion from other areas of life have had relatively little appeal because Islamic religion has always been too closely linked to the rest of life. An alternative approach, generally associated with Islamic modernism or reformism, has been to accept but Islamicize the myth. On this view it is argued that it is Islam that provides the best basis for progress. While the prophet’s moral and spiritual teachings cannot be superseded, social and moral progress can occur in the degree to which people accept these basic moral and spiritual teachings and in the ways they work them out. Past Muslim cultural greatness is advanced as proof of this, while the causes of later decline are found partly in external or accidental factors, such as the Mongol invasion in the thirteenth century, and partly in the failure of Muslims to live up to their religion. Thus there is, on this view, nothing to keep Muslims from returning to their roots and producing, once again, the world’s leading society. Furthermore, many hold that the West, in spite of its material progress, is in moral and spiritual decline, often citing Western writers who make the same point. This view is usually linked with the extremely common idea that the West is essentially materialistic and the East essentially spiritual. Unlike Christianity, which is seen as overemphazing spirituality and thus failing to provide guidance for worldly activities as well as provoking extreme materialism as a reaction, Islam properly balances material and spiritual needs and therefore makes progress possible without the need to sacrifice religion. This will happen as soon as Muslims come to understand and practice their religion correctly. Most reformists and many secularists accept the idea of progress proceeding historically through the rise and fall of civilizations. On this view classical Islamic civilization led the march of progress in the world before the modern West took over and will soon do so again, now that the West is faltering. All of these ideas, in varying degrees and combinations, have been extremely popular in the Muslim world for several generations. They have been, at the very least, an emotionally satisfying response to the challenge.11
Sayyid Qutb: From Secularist to Islamic Activist These ideas were very much the currency of discussion in the circles in which Sayyid Qutb moved in Cairo from the 1920’s to the 1940’s. Born in a village in 1906, he had shifted to Cairo in 1919 to complete his education and then worked in the Ministry of Education from 1933 until 1952. He was also a poet and essayist, associating with the leading secular literary lights of the day. From 1939 he began to write about the Qur’an from a literary point of view and by 1948 he had begun to call for an Islamic society, writing one of his best known books, Social Justice in Islam (Al-‘Adalah al-Ijtima‘iyyah fi al-Islam), in that year. In 1948 he went to the United States for about two years and this visit appears to have confirmed for him the ideas about the moral decline of the West. After his return he joined the Muslim Brotherhood, the leading Islamic activist group of
258 W. Shepard the time, and became one of its leading ideologues. He was arrested in 1954 when the Brotherhood was banned and spent most of the rest of his life in prison, being briefly released in 1964, rearrested in 1965, and executed for conspiracy against the government in 1966. He continued to write in prison and his prison writings are marked by an increasingly radical Islamism. Probably his most uncompromising book is Milestones (Ma‘alim fi al-Tariq), published during his brief period of freedom and used as evidence against him in his trial. In this and other late works he is very concerned to free his thought and that of his readers from Western presuppositions, not only in politics but also in areas such as art, literature, social science and education, although he is more willing to accept Western formulations in the physical sciences and purely technical subjects, which he seems to believe can be relatively free of cultural presuppositions.12 Among these Western presuppositions is certainly the myth of progress. In what follows I shall attempt to illustrate the change in his attitude toward this myth as reflected in his writings from the early 1930’s until his death. We shall we see that he moved from a fairly standard secularist acceptance of the myth through an effort to Islamize it and finally reached a point where he had completely, or almost completely divested himself of it.
Writings of the Secularist Period Sayyid Qutb’s attitude during his secularist period can be seen from the following in a series of articles published in 1939: ‘We must unavoidably borrow from European civilization since Europe is ahead of us on the path of progress just as it borrowed from our civilization when we were ahead of it on the path of progress’.13
In the same series he describes the mentality of the traditional Islamic scholars as backward and reactionary.14 In articles in the early 1940s he encourages the adoption of new ideas about teaching from Europe and presents Great Britain as a coming model of democratic socialism.15 He sees social and political progress in Egypt over the previous fifty years and is optimistic about the future.16 Like many at the time, he looked forward to something of a brave new world after the Second World War and the language of the myth of progress appears when he speaks, for example, of developments that ‘will assure the nation that it is marching with the rest of the world toward human civilization’.17 His admiration for Western-style progress is far from unreserved, however. He sometimes suggests that the West has lost its direction; and is concerned that Egypt, and the East generally, preserve its cultural characteristics and keep to a reasonable pace of change.18 He also affirms the idea of the materialism of the West and the spirituality of the East.19 He quite strongly rejects ‘progress’ insofar as it involves a loosening of sexual morals.20 At this stage, however, his criticism of the West is balanced by much that is positive and is made in the name of concerns such as Egyptian culture or a generalized spiritual East, rather than specifically of Islam.
Writings of the Islamist Period: The Myth Islamized When Qutb’s writing takes an Islamist turn, this criticism becomes sharper and is stated in specifically Islamic terms, and progress is put on an Islamic basis. The myth of progress is Islamized. A good statement of his position is found in a collection of articles published in 1952–3 under the title Toward an Islamic Society (Nahw Mujtama‘ Islami).21 Here the
The Myth of Progress 259 image of advancing and retreating waves is used to express the progressive rise and fall of social systems. He begins by telling us that the time of the white man’s civilization is over, it has no more ideas to offer that will lead to further human progress. Its last significant contribution was the French Revolution’s ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity. The West has done as much with the first two of those as it will, while it never realized the third. True, it still innovates at the material level, but at the level of thought and spirit it has run dry. Communism is, in fact, the final stage of the West’s materialism and the West, including even America, will eventually go Communist. Once achieved, however, Communism will not last since it, too, has nothing to offer beyond the material. In fact, the ‘wave’ of materialism has about reached its fullest expansion.22 People need a new dream if they are to have a future of continual growth and progress, and the Islamic idea is the only one that can provide this. Europe might have profited from it sooner if it had not shut the door on the first ‘wave’ of Islam (i.e. in the early centuries of Islam), and in fact it did draw on Islam for its own Renaissance. Perhaps it had first to learn from its experience with materialism. The leadership of humanity is passing to Islam; indeed, if Islam did not exist, humans would have to invent something like it. The Islamic world therefore has an obligation to present Islam but to do this Islam must be reflected in its society. When Communism dominates the U.S., by the end of the twentieth century, there will be a struggle between humane values represented by Islam and materialism represented by Communism. Islam will win, since it is ‘the idea which allows life continual development in its shadow’.23 Progress in the case of Islam does not mean change in its basic principles and goals, since these are unchanging, but rather in the daily progress of humankind toward these principles and goals, which make all the so-called modern ‘progressive’ systems appear backward by comparison.24 The first wave of Islam advanced for about eight centuries and then retreated, not because it had exhausted its potential but because humanity was not yet suited for it. In fact it presented and implemented its ideals of freedom, justice, brotherhood and equality so successfully that they became ideals for all humanity. Europe in the French Revolution accepted them but could not implement them as well as Islam had in its early days. Its experience, however, has made it more capable of profiting from what Islam has to offer than at any previous time. Interestingly, this is in a way a rather Western-oriented statement. It takes for granted that ‘progress’ in recent centuries is what has happened in the West, and Islam appears here as something largely designed to meet the needs of the Western world, or at least needs generated by the Western impact. Moreover there is at least a suggestion that the Western ‘spiritual experiences, intellectual progress and scientific conquests’ may have a positive role to play in God’s plan.25
Toward the Rejection of the Myth As his writing becomes more radically Islamist, Sayyid Qutb continues to accept the reality and qualified value of material progress, but the idea of social and moral progress becomes increasingly problematic. In the introduction to Islam and the Problems of Civilization (Al-Islam wa-Mushkilat al-Hadarah), first published around 1960,26 he takes a line like that in Toward an Islamic Society, but the presentation is starker and harsher and there are fewer redeeming features in the present situation. The turn to Islam will come only at the last instant and seems less a natural dialectical swing and more a matter of direct divine guidance. Some of the ideas expressed in Toward an Islamic Society, particularly the image of advancing and retreating waves, are elaborated at greater length and in an interesting
260 W. Shepard way in another book, This Religion of Islam (Hadha al-Din), published in 1962 or earlier. The first ‘wave’ of Islam, willed by God but accomplished by human effort, was relatively brief but provided a beacon to which later humanity can aspire. Moreover, it left traces and effects in the world—represented especially in ideas, such as the ideas of the unity of the human race, of the nobility of all humans, of communities based on creed rather than race or tribe, and of international treaties and covenants, which are at least recognized, if not well implemented. When Islam came the first time it had only raw human nature (fitrah) to build on, but now it also has these traces from the first wave. Hence, humanity may now be better able to understand and respond to Islam in its second wave than in its first,28 a point which is repeated again and again in the book. This optimistic assessment is balanced, however, by the consideration that the present time is one of barbarism (Jahiliyyah) and this Jahiliyyah is more subtle and complex than the old Jahiliyyah29 since it is built on a science that rejects God. Thus, while humanity may now be in some ways better positioned to understand Islam, it is in fact the case that ‘Humanity in general today is further from God’.30 Activists must rely on the promise of God, not any supportive human factors or any progressive trends of history. Unlike the preceding works discussed, this book does not seem to expect that the Western world will go Communist.31 Even in the more optimistic part of the assessment here, a full myth of progress is absent. The language associated with the myth of progress appears only rarely and there is no sense that the second wave of Islam will reach a higher level than that of the first wave. Still, the idea that humanity as a whole may be better able to respond to Islam represents a significant degree of progress of a certain sort and there is some recognition given to Western international law and, in a slightly backhanded way, to Western ideologies, which do represent progress of a sort, and from which humanity can rise higher at the urging of Islam in its next turn.32 The main contribution of Western ideas, however, seems to be the negative experience of their deviation from Islam (this emphasis is clearer here than in Toward an Islamic Society). In The Characteristics of the Islamic Conception (Khasa’is al-Tasawwur al-Islami), probably dating also from the early 1960’s,33 the constantly repeated slogan that relates to our concern is ‘movement within a fixed orbit and about a fixed axis’.34 The fixed orbit and axis are provided by a ‘divinely given conception’ which he very strongly insists does not change or evolve.35 Indeed, the key word, ‘movement’ (harakah), seems chosen to avoid an implicit reference to progress and some of his illustrations, such as planets moving in their orbits,36 do not suggest progress. Admittedly this ‘movement’ is sometimes described as ‘development’,37 ‘progress’ or ‘forward movement’,38 but this is mainly in the areas of physical science and technology.39 He very strongly rejects what he calls ‘absolute development’,40 particularly the Marxist dialectic, in which basic philosophical ideas and basic values change, and warns that Muslims who follow Westerners in rebelling against religion ‘in the name of modernization and reform and development or in the name of escaping from the heritage of the middle ages’41 risk depriving humanity of the one true source of divine guidance. He is willing to use the language of progress to score a debater’s point, however, when he asserts that in Western terms they are actually ‘reactionaries’ and not the ‘progressives’ they claim to be, since religious and anti-Marxist thinking has become general in the West.42
Milestones: The Myth Largely Rejected
Milestones (Ma‘alim fi al-Tariq), published in 1964,43 was the last work published during Sayyid Qutb’s lifetime and was, as already mentioned, probably the most radical. At a
The Myth of Progress 261 few points it shows a positive though complex attitude toward at least the language of the myth of progress, and a continuation of the tendency to adapt that language for Islam. It assumes, as Qutb does elsewhere, that purely material technological progress has been made and explicitly recognizes that Western societies are well ahead of Muslims in this realm and will be for some time to come. But material progress alone is of very limited value. In a chapter entitled, ‘Islam Is Civilization’ he argues that a society which is materially advanced but morally and spiritually Jahili can only be considered ‘backward’. Only Islamic societies are civilized societies—indeed, the term ‘civilized’ means ‘Islamic’ and the term ‘backward’ means ‘Jahili’. Only Islamic values cause people to progress in distinctively human qualities and move away from animal qualities, and the ‘line of human progress moves in the direction of controlling animal impulses, enclosing them within the sphere of the family on the basis of duty to carry out the human task’.44 The nature of human values, however, does not ‘develop’ or change over time, as ‘progressives’ and ‘scientific socialists’ claim.45 Likewise, Islam, as sent by God, is always the same; so-called ‘progressive Islam’ is not God’s Islam but Islam with some human elements mixed in. What can happen, as already suggested in Toward an Islamic Society, is that Islam causes people to progress along the scale of fixed values. In Africa it clothed people and caused societies to develop from the tribal to the national stage. Islam can be adapted to any level of material culture and, from a strictly moral and spiritual point of view, all Islamic societies would appear to be equally civilized whatever their material level. Once its moral and spiritual principles are accepted, however, Islam does also encourage material development and material development properly undertaken is, indeed, a form of worship. When an Islamic society adds material development to its moral and spiritual accomplishment it will reach ‘the pinnacle of civilization’.46 Here material progress is not quite morally neutral, as he sometimes seems to say. Allied to Islam it has positive value. Moreover, so far as one can tell from Milestones, when an Islamic society is once again fully established it will not be at a moral level any lower than of the first Islamic society, and it will certainly be at a higher level of technology. To that extent it would presumably be better than any Islamic society of the past, even that of the prophet. This is hardly the myth of progress in its usual sense, but is perhaps a trace of that myth. These concessions to the myth of progress, if we may call them that, occur mainly in one chapter of the book, however. For the rest, the matter is different. As mentioned earlier, the book’s best known thesis is that the word Jahiliyyah does not refer only to the time of ‘ignorance’ before Muhammad but to all societies in all times and places that do not govern themselves by the Islamic creed, values and laws. Jahiliyyah and Islam are mutually exclusive and atemporal coordinates. Furthermore, there are no Islamic societies today (i.e. at the time of the writing of the book). Even those that call themselves Islamic are in fact Jahili. Where he formerly recognized a weakening of Muslim society in recent centuries, Qutb now asserts that Islam has ceased to ‘exist’. Moreover, today’s Jahiliyyah is in more open rebellion against the authority of God than the ‘simple and primitive’ Jahiliyyah of Muhammad’s time.47 There is hope, however, because what produced that unique first generation of Muslims was the Qur’an, and the Qur’an is still with us. Likewise, the method used by the prophet Muhammad, and indeed by all the prophets, to establish the Muslim community, is known and is meant for all times and places. Here there is no sense of historical progress. There is no talk of ways in which the experience of the last thirteen centuries may have prepared for a new wave of Islam.48
262 W. Shepard The gap between the present Jahiliyyah and the desired Islamic society is quite stark and apparently as great as it has ever been. The positive factors are ones that always have existed and always will, i.e. the Qur’an and the example of the Prophet. In principle, at least, the possibility of returning Islam to ‘existence’ is equally present and equally problematic at all times. This point is underlined at the end of the book by Qutb’s discussion of the Qur’anic account of the Men of the Pit (Qur’an, Chapter 85), in which believers were tortured and killed for their faith. He makes the point that what matters to the Islamic activist is his commitment and effort, not the external success which God may grant or withhold for reasons unknown to us. He uses the Quranic accounts of the prophets to indicate four possible outcomes to any Islamic movement. The movement may fail to establish itself but the believers may be saved from God’s punishment of the unbelieving society (e.g. Noah). The movement may establish itself incompletely (e.g. Moses). The movement may establish itself fully (Muhammad). The movement may fail and the believers may be killed (Men of the Pit). God alone determines which of these will be the outcome in any given case, but whatever it is, the believers will have carried out their duty and will receive an eternal reward, and this is the main consideration.49 Reading this I cannot but feel that Sayyid Qutb surmised what his own fate would be and was trying to prepare others for this apparent defeat. More relevant to our immediate concern, the presentation is such as to give the impression that one outcome is about as likely as any other at any given time, so far as human knowledge goes. This rejection of the myth of progress is confirmed by what is probably Qutb’s final word on the subject. In a passage in the posthumously published book, Components of the Islamic Conception (Muqawwima¯t al-Tasawwur al-Islami), he addresses the question more explicitly than he does in Milestones. ‘Humanity moves within a broad range; it may rise till it is higher than the angels, or descend until it is lower than the beasts. Its whole history in this respect is a series of rises and falls, and there is no one ascending line over time. Its scientific knowledge and experience in the material world and its ability to use the practical laws of the universe may indeed proceed in a rising line, but its humanity does not proceed along this line. Rather it follows the guidance of its nature (fitrah) to the soundest of conditions—that is, service to God alone and freedom from service to servants—or to deviation from that sound condition. The ascending line of science does not matter, nor does the ascending line of the facilities of material civilization. They can become causes of decline and factors in a deterioration to ‘the lowest of the low’ when they are separated from the line of truly sound ascent. ‘We have indeed created man in the best of mould, then do we abase him to be the lowest of the low, except such as believe and do righteous deeds. . .’50
With this, Qutb appears to have returned to one version of the traditional Islamic view, the view which sees no historical directionality. At one very crucial point, however, this is not the case. In its traditional forms, the Islamic view of history provided little expectation of long term positive change and little reason to work for it. In some forms, decline seemed almost inevitable. By contrast, the myth of progress has provided a motive for the acceptance of change both in the West and elsewhere. In his last stage Sayyid Qutb retains a motive for change perhaps functionally equivalent to that supplied by the myth of progress. The acceptance of technological progress provides one source of hope for permanent improvement. More important, human effort may result in positive change, not because of a trend discoverable in human history but because God may reward human effort in this way.
The Myth of Progress 263 Concluding Comments In Sayyid Qutb’s writings we can find all three of the major modern Muslim responses to the myth of progress. He first accepted it, then Islamized it, then rejected it. This trajectory is similar to that by which he rejected other key Western ideas and it seems to show very accurately what, for him, was involved in rejecting the moral and spiritual bases of the West and how thorough this rejection was. It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the degree to which his successors have or have not followed his lead here.51 Sayyid Qutb is known as a martyr (shahid) and both the English and Arabic words have the root meaning of ‘witness’. The books in which he set forth these views are still widely read and stand as a witness to his ideas and to the profound rejection of the existing system that he came to stand for. His death was a witness to his personal commitment to these views and to the price his followers would have to pay. As part of this larger witness, his views on progress and the trajectory by which he reached them, represent one continuing option for Muslims—and perhaps, mutatis mutandis, for others who find themselves at odds with ‘modernity’.
Notes 1 Akhavi, Shahrough, ‘Qutb, Sayyid’ in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, vol 3, pp. 403. 2 On the life and writings of Sayyid Qutb, see, inter alia, Akhavi, ibid., pp. 400-404, Mousalli, Ahmed Salah al-Din, Radical Islamic Fundamentalism: The Ideological and Political Discourse of Sayyid Qutb, American University of Beirut, 1992; Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi‘, Intellectual Origins of Islamic Resurgence in the Modern Arab World, Albany: SUNY Press, 1996, chs. 4–6; and William E. Shepard (trans. and intro.), Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism: A Translation and Critical Analysis of Social Justice in Islam, Leiden: Brill, l996, pp. ix-xxii. 3 Pollard, Sidney, The Idea of Progress: History and Society. London: Watts, 1968, pp. ix–x, cf. 3–4. 4 It is beyond the scope of this article to deal with the complex discussions of this and related topics by scholars over the last generation. (On this, see for example Peter Osborne, The Politics of Time: Modernity and Avant-Garde, London, New York: Verso, 1995). So far as I can tell, Sayyid Qutb was unaware of any developments in Western thinking about progress after the 1950’s. 5 Admittedly this evaluation is very much based on my intuitive perception of things as I have not had the occasion to study it systematically, though I have made a collection of statements and passages from the media, politicians, etc. here in New Zealand and elsewhere which illustrate the myth of progress being taken for granted. The current (as of this writing) New Zealand prime minister, in a television interview related to the upcoming election (6 October 1996), described his supporters as those who are looking forward and his opponents as those who are looking backward. Even where the myth of progress seems to be contradicted, as in the claim that the present generation of youth cannot expect to be better off than its parents, such a claim gains its point and poignancy precisely against the background of the expectations engendered by the myth. The following is typical of what I have in mind: ‘The notion that the plane of mankind’s spiritual development is in a process of ascension may hardly seem realistic to a generation disillusioned with the dream of progress. Everywhere is war, corruption and pollution. How could one reasonably suggest that the human race is spiritually progressing? Yet that is exactly what I suggest. Our very sense of disillusionment arises from the fact that we expect more of ourselves than our forebears did of themselves. Human behaviour that we find repugnant and outrageous today we accepted as a matter of course yesteryear.’ Peck, M. Scott, The Road Less Travelled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth, London: Arrow Books, 1990 1978, pp. 285–6. 6 These two attitudes are enshrined in two sayings ascribed to the Prophet Muhammad. According to one, ‘The best of my people are my generation; then they that come immediately after them; then they that come immediately after those.’ According to the other there will come at the beginning of each century one who renews religion; but ‘renews’ here implies at most bring things back to where they had been. For an interesting treatment of this topic see Abu Bakr Siraj ed-Din, ‘The Islamic and Christian Conceptions of the March of Time’, Islamic
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Quarterly (1954), pp. 229–235. See also, W. Shepard, ‘The Doctrine of Progress in Some Modern Muslim Writings’, The Bulletin of the Henry Martyn Institute of Islamic Studies 10:4 (1991) pp. 51–64. Khomeini, Islam and Revolution, trans. H. Algar, Berke1ey: Mizan Press, 1981, p. 36. In discussions of the Muslim world, the term ‘secularist’ does not usually mean ‘anti-religious’ but rather desiring to separate religion from at least some aspects of social life. On the meaning of such terms as ‘secularist’, ‘modernist’, ‘Islamist’, see W. Shepard, ‘Islam and Ideology: Towards a Typology’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 19 (1987) pp. 307–36. ‘Modernity’ (‘asriyyah) carries connotations of economic progress, science, positive change, and cultural advancement.’ (Valerie Hoffman-Ladd, ‘Polemics on the Modesty and Segregation of Women in Contemporary Egypt’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 19 (1987):38) See also Shepard, ‘The Doctrine of Progress’, which presents the material in this section in greater detail and provides a more detailed bibliography. In Arabic these include taqaddum (progress or advancement), which is probably the most commonly used word in Arabic for ‘progress’, particularly in the sense of material progress, tatawwur (development, evolution), tanmiyah (growth, development) and ruqi, irtiqa*’ (ascent, advancement, progress). Ruqi and, irtiqa*’, however, may refer to moral or spiritual advancement without a historical-temporal reference in the sense involved in the myth of progress, so that their appearance is often more ambiguous. For an example of this kind of thinking see my discussion of Ahmad Amin in W. Shepard, The Faith of a Modern Muslim Intellectual (New Delhi: Indian Institute of Islamic Studies, 1982), pp. 147–58; for a forceful criticism of the same writer see Gustave Von Grunebaum, Modern Islam: The Search for Cultural Identity, New York: Vintage, 1964, pp. 366–73. See Shepard, Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism, pp. 300–20. Naqd Kitab Mustaqbal al-Thaqafah fi Misr (Critique of the Book ‘The Future of Culture in Egypt’ Jiddah: AI-Dar al-Sa‘udiyyah li-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawzi‘, 1389/1969 [originally published in Sahifat Dar al-‘UIum, 1939], p. 28. Ibid., pp. 53, 74. Respectively: ‘Al-kutub al-madrasiyyah (School Books)’, Majallat al-Shu’un al-Ijtima‘iyyah (Journal of Social Affairs), Year 1, No. 8 (1359/1940); *‘Alam jadid fi tayyat hadha al-jahim (A New Year inside this Hell)’, ibid., Year 2 (1360/1941), No. 8. ‘Mizaniyyatuna al-qawmiyyah tad‘u ila al-amal wa-l-tafa’ul (Our National Balance Sheet Calls for Hope and Optimism).’ ibid., Year 2, No. 12, and ‘Hal nahnu mutahaddirun? (Are We Civilized?).’ ibid., Year 3, No. 4; and ‘Fi al-mustaqbal amal wa-furas muhayya’ah li-l-istighlal (In the Future, Hopes and Opportunities Ready to be Taken)’, ibid., Year 4 (1943), No. 2. ‘Fi mafraq al-tariq bayn al-qawmiyyah wa-l-‘alamiyyah (At the Crossroads between Nationalism and Internationalism).’ ibid., Year 4, No. 11; ‘Halqah mafqudah fi nahdatina al-‘aqliyyah al-hadithah (A Missing Link in Our Modern Intellectual Renaissance).’ ibid., Year 4, No. 2, p. 27; cf. ‘Alam al-mustaqbal wa-baramij al-shabab (The World of the Future and the Programs for Youth).’ ibid., Year 6, No. 7. ‘Al-‘alam yajri (The world runs)’, Al-Risalah, 10 Dec. 1933, pp 12–13.; ‘‘Daribat al-tatawwur (The Tax Imposed by Development)’, Majallat al-Shu’un al-Ijtima‘iyyah ( Journal of Social Affairs), Cairo, Year 1, No. 6; Mustaqbal al-Thaqafah, p. 30–1. Mustaqbal al-Thaqafah, pp. 32–3; ‘Alam jadid’, Majallat al-Shu’un al-Ijtima‘iyyah, Year 2, No 8. ‘Fi al-mustaqbal amal wa-furas muhayya’ah li-l-istighlal’, ibid., Year 4, No. 1. See his articles in the Cairo literary magazine, Al-Risalah, 3 June. 1945, pp. 1309–10, 6 Aug 1946, pp. 856–8. Published originally as a series of articles under this general title in Al-Muslimun, a magazine of the Muslim Brotherhood, and republished after the author’s death as a book by the same title. My copy is the 6th ed., Dar al-Shuruq, 1983/1403. Interestingly, this view seems to owe something to Marxist dialectics. In criticizing Marxism he appears to accept something like its dialectical view of history, except, of course, that Marxist society is not the end of the dialectical process (cf. Khasa’is al-Tasawwur al-Islami (The Characteristics of the Islamic Conception), eighth edition (Cairo and Beirut: Dar al-Shuruq, 1403/1983), p.81). He speaks of the wave of Communism reaching its limit (Nahw Mujtama‘ Islami, pp. 31–2). Nahw Mijtama‘ Islami, p.40. Nahw Mujtama‘ Islami, p. 75; pp. 67–8; cf. 40–1.
The Myth of Progress 265 25 ‘. . . humanity was not all prepared to receive this light and benefit from it (i.e. Islam) in its first shining forth, and it needed long experience and a violent reaction against the first asceticism (i.e. Christianity) and the first ignorance, by which it was thrust violently into the world of matter to invent in that world what God willed it to invent, and to prepare itself by its spiritual experience, intellectual progress and scientific conquests to accept that light in its next time around.’ (Nahw Mujtama‘ Islami, p. 33). 26 My edition is Dar al-Shuruq, 1303 /1983. 27 The copies available to me are: Hadha al-Din (Beirut, etc.: Al-Ittihad Al-Islami Al-‘Alami, 1978); English translation: This Religion of Islam (Kuwait: International Islamic Federation of Student Organizations, 1982). Note that all translations from Qutb in this article are directly from the Arabic and may or may not coincide with the published translations to which reference is given for the benefit of the reader. 28 Hadha al-Din, pp. 84–9; This Religion of Islam, pp. 85–93. 29 The word Jahiliyyah is used both for Arab society just before the time of Muhammad and, by writers such as Qutb, for contemporary societies that they do not consider Islamic. 30 Hadha al-Din, pp. 92-–6, 90; This Religion of Islam, pp 95–8, 92. 31 Compare the shift away from this idea in the last edition of Social Justice in Islam (Shepard, Sayyid Qutb, ch. 9). 32 Hadha al-Din, pp. 86–91; This Religion of Islam, pp. 88–93. 33 My copy is the eighth edition, Cairo and Beirut: Dar al-Shuruq, 1403/1983. There is an English translation, The Islamic Concept and Its Characteristics, trans. M. M. Siddiqui, Indianapolis: American Trust Publications, 1991. 34 Ibid., esp. pp. 72–90 (English translation, pp. 67–83). 35 Ibid., pp. 78, 84–85, 87, etc. (English translation, pp. 73, 77–78, 80). 36 Ibid. p. 73 (English translation, pp. 68). 37 Tatawwur or tatwir, and tarqiyah, ibid. 38 Harakah ila al-amam, ibid., p. 84 (English translation, pp. 77). 39 E.g. Ibid., pp. 75–6 (English translation, p. 70). 40 Ibid., pp. 83, 87 (English translation, pp. 76, 80). 41 Ibid., p. 90 (English translation, p. 82). 42 Ibid. 43 My copy of the Arabic text of Ma‘alim fi al-Tariq is Beirut: Dar al-Shuruq, 1393/1973; English translation: Milestones. Kuwait: International Islamic Federation of Student Organizations, 1398/1978. 44 Ma‘alim, p. 114; Milestones, p. 185. 45 There are no ‘agrarian’ or ‘industrial’, or ‘capitalist’ or ‘socialist’, or ‘bourgeois’ or ‘proletarian’ values, there are only human values or animal values, i.e. Islamic or Jahili values. Ma‘alim, pp. 110–11; Milestones, pp. 18l–2. 46 Ma‘alim, p. 115; Milestones, p. 187. 47 Ma‘alim, p. 8; Milestones, p. 15. 48 We may also note that in Social Justice in Islam, a relatively optimistic paragraph about increasing human readiness to benefit from Islam which was added to the third edition is eliminated from the sixth edition (Shepard, Sayyid Qutb, p. 348). Likewise, any talk of an Islamic bloc or of the West going communist is eliminated; stress is on the stark contrast between Islam and Jahiliyyah. (ibid., ch. 9). 49 Ma‘alim, pp. 173–82; Milestones pp. 281–96. 50 Qur’an, Chapter 95, verses 4–6); Muqawwimat al-Tasawwur al-Islami (Components of the Islamic Conception). 4th Printing. Dar al-Shuruq, 1408/1988), p. 368. 51 My impression is that many would retain more of the myth of progress than he does, but Abd al-Salam Farag, the ideologue of the Jihad group responsible for the assassination of Anwar al-Sadat in Egypt seems to me to be far more traditional. See Shepard, ‘The Doctrine of Progress’, p. 53. Khomeini, after the revolution, took the view that the present generation in Iran is better even than the generation of the time of ‘Ali, the first Shi’i Imam, although he did not, of course, claim that the revolutionary leadership was better than the Imam and his closest followers. My own view is that Khomeini’s view in relation to progress is essentially the same as Qutb’s latest view as he probably would have articulated it had he experienced a successful Islamic revolution.
266 W. Shepard WILLIAM SHEPARD is Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Canterbury. He graduated from Swarthmore College, took a Master of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary (New York City), and a Ph.D. from Harvard. He is particularly interested in modern Islamic thought and has published two books on 20th century Egyptian Muslim thinkers. The most recent of these is Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism (Brill, 1996), a translation and critical analysis of one of Qutb’s major works. Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Canterbury, Private Bay 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand.
The Myth of Progress in the Writings of Sayyid Qutb W S The idea or, as I prefer to say, the ‘myth’ of progress has been both accepted and debated in the Western world as an essential component in what we call ‘modernity’. Outside the Western world it has also functioned as one of the most effective weapons in the ideological arsenal supporting Western colonialism and imperialism. This article considers briefly how this myth has been received in the Islamic world and then, at greater length, how it was first accepted, then modified and then rejected by a man who came to be one of the ideological fathers of the current Islamic Resurgence, the ? 1997 Academic Press Limited Egyptian writer and activist, Sayyid Qutb.
Sayyid Qutb’s role in inspiring the Islamic resurgence of the last generation has been described as possibly ‘even greater than that of Ayatollah Khomeini’.1 This inspiration has operated both through his many writings and through his example as a martyr since he was executed by the Egyptian government in 1966 for his part in an alleged Islamist plot against the government.2 He is probably best known for the view, expounded in his latest writings, that to all so-called Muslim societies of his time had in fact abandoned Islam and were living a life of Jahiliyyah (barbaric ignorance). This claim was closely linked with another and even more basic feature of his later writing, his concern to purge Muslims of the effects of Western cultural influence, which he saw as the main cause of their Jahiliyyah condition. As part of this rejection of Western influence he rejected the Western ‘myth’ of progress. He came to this rejection only gradually, however, and in this article I shall trace the trajectory by which he moved from a qualified acceptance of the myth, through an effort to adapt it, to his final rejection of it. Qutb, himself, does not give a lot of prominence to this effort, indeed often it seems to happen at the level of ‘taken-for-granted’ thinking, nor to my knowledge has anyone else discussed this aspect of his thinking in any detail. Still, his rejection of this myth is an indication of how serious his effort was to free himself of Western presuppositions and the degree to which he succeeded in doing so.
The Myth of Progress, West and East In general terms, the myth of progress involves the belief that history follows a continuous course of change bringing improvement in human conditions. In its fullest and most significant form, this has meant not only physical but also moral, social and spiritual conditions. The myth arose in Europe in the eighteenth century and came to be one of the intellectual and spiritual foundations of modern Western society. It has indeed been called ‘the modern religion, or the modern substitute for religion’.3 The myth has often been combined with an organic view of the rise and fall of civilizations, giving rise to a picture of history in which successive civilizations each reach a higher point of development than the previous one. On this view, of course, modern Western civilization (or some particular form of it) represents the latest stage of progress. The myth of progress has undoubtedly facilitated the major changes of the last two centuries, since people are more likely to initiate and accept change if they feel confident it will improve their situation or that of those close to them. The myth has been called into question in this century by two world wars, the threat of nuclear 0048–721X/97/030255 + 12 $25.00/0/rl970084
? 1997 Academic Press Limited
256 W. Shepard holocaust and more recently of ecological disaster, so that it became fashionable in certain circles to disown it. I believe, though, that it has been only chastened, not dethroned, at least at the popular level.4 While Westerners no longer believe that progress is inevitable or unilinear in a simple manner, they still do fundamentally accept it and, indeed, largely take it for granted.5 This myth is one of many Western ideas that have spread to the Muslim world, as to other non-Western societies. It has undoubtedly facilitated the changes we commonly label ‘development’ or ‘modernization’, but it also has helped to justify the Western domination of ‘backward’ peoples and its acceptance by local elites allowed them to accept direct Western tutelage for a time. When in time they sought to reject overt Western tutelage, this, too, was done in the name of ‘progress’, allied to Westernderived ideologies such as nationalism and socialism. This helps to explain why the leaders of newly independent countries after the first and second world wars were often more avid cultural Westernizers than the colonial rulers before them. ‘Progress’ continues to justify the acceptance of much Western culture in the Muslim world and elsewhere, and the retreat of direct Western political rule has been accompanied by the continued and often accelerated penetration of Western culture. Acceptance of the myth of progress, however, has not been a simple matter for Muslims, for there are significant theological problems. Islam claims to be based on the last of a series of prophetic missions which began with Adam, included figures such as Moses and Jesus, and ended with Muhammad. Muhammad’s mission will not be superseded until the end of time. He was the best of human beings, his immediate followers were the best of Muslims, and Muslim society, based on his message, must be the best of societies. Muslim society after Muhammad undoubtedly made progress in physical science and technology, but fundamental moral or spiritual progress beyond the model given by the Prophet and his generation has seemed out of the question. Muslim history since Muhammad has traditionally been pictured as a long-term decline or at best as a series of declines and reforms with no overall directionality.6 That there should be significant moral progress in actual society is far from the traditional Muslim expectation and that there should be progress in basic ethic and spiritual ideas is ruled out by basic Islamic doctrine. The claim in the Western myth of progress that both of these have happened and, moreover, have happened outside the Muslim community is a profound and potentially devastating challenge to the Muslim worldview and the Muslim self-image. In the face of this challenge, there have been three general sorts of options: to reject the myth, to accept it, or to adapt it. The rejectionist position can be illustrated by Ayatollah Khomeini’s comment on the American moon landing: ‘Let them go all the way to Mars or beyond the Milky Way; they will still be deprived of true happiness, moral virtue, and spiritual advancement. . . This morality, these laws that are needed, we already possess’.7 Western technological progress is recognized, but is somewhat devalued and moral or spiritual progress is clearly denied. At the other extreme, those politicians and reformers who have sought to introduce Western ways have generally accepted the myth They have commonly taken a ‘secularist’ position which tends to narrow the scope of strictly religious matters (while usually retaining Islam as cultural heritage) and divides life into ‘religious’ and ‘non-religious’ areas, much as the West is perceived to do. ‘Progress’ is referred mainly to the ‘non-religious’ areas, which now include most forms of social and political ethics.8 Progress is denied only of the most basic elements of Muhammad’s message and these tend to be identified with the most basic elements in Christian/Western
The Myth of Progress 257 spirituality. For Muslim secularists the myth of progress in this form can be almost as taken-for-granted as it is among Westerners, with the relatively unreflective claim that what they want to do is in accord with ‘modernity’ or ‘modern civilization’9— undoubtedly two of the most powerful verbal symbols connected with the myth of progress. Arguments such as ‘we must do this to keep up with the times’ are presented as if they were obvious to all right-thinking persons. Such terms as ‘evolution’, ‘development’, and the like10 commonly signal the presence of the myth, even when it is not fully articulated, as is the case in the West. Beyond a Westernized elite, however, the moves to separate religion from other areas of life have had relatively little appeal because Islamic religion has always been too closely linked to the rest of life. An alternative approach, generally associated with Islamic modernism or reformism, has been to accept but Islamicize the myth. On this view it is argued that it is Islam that provides the best basis for progress. While the prophet’s moral and spiritual teachings cannot be superseded, social and moral progress can occur in the degree to which people accept these basic moral and spiritual teachings and in the ways they work them out. Past Muslim cultural greatness is advanced as proof of this, while the causes of later decline are found partly in external or accidental factors, such as the Mongol invasion in the thirteenth century, and partly in the failure of Muslims to live up to their religion. Thus there is, on this view, nothing to keep Muslims from returning to their roots and producing, once again, the world’s leading society. Furthermore, many hold that the West, in spite of its material progress, is in moral and spiritual decline, often citing Western writers who make the same point. This view is usually linked with the extremely common idea that the West is essentially materialistic and the East essentially spiritual. Unlike Christianity, which is seen as overemphazing spirituality and thus failing to provide guidance for worldly activities as well as provoking extreme materialism as a reaction, Islam properly balances material and spiritual needs and therefore makes progress possible without the need to sacrifice religion. This will happen as soon as Muslims come to understand and practice their religion correctly. Most reformists and many secularists accept the idea of progress proceeding historically through the rise and fall of civilizations. On this view classical Islamic civilization led the march of progress in the world before the modern West took over and will soon do so again, now that the West is faltering. All of these ideas, in varying degrees and combinations, have been extremely popular in the Muslim world for several generations. They have been, at the very least, an emotionally satisfying response to the challenge.11
Sayyid Qutb: From Secularist to Islamic Activist These ideas were very much the currency of discussion in the circles in which Sayyid Qutb moved in Cairo from the 1920’s to the 1940’s. Born in a village in 1906, he had shifted to Cairo in 1919 to complete his education and then worked in the Ministry of Education from 1933 until 1952. He was also a poet and essayist, associating with the leading secular literary lights of the day. From 1939 he began to write about the Qur’an from a literary point of view and by 1948 he had begun to call for an Islamic society, writing one of his best known books, Social Justice in Islam (Al-‘Adalah al-Ijtima‘iyyah fi al-Islam), in that year. In 1948 he went to the United States for about two years and this visit appears to have confirmed for him the ideas about the moral decline of the West. After his return he joined the Muslim Brotherhood, the leading Islamic activist group of
258 W. Shepard the time, and became one of its leading ideologues. He was arrested in 1954 when the Brotherhood was banned and spent most of the rest of his life in prison, being briefly released in 1964, rearrested in 1965, and executed for conspiracy against the government in 1966. He continued to write in prison and his prison writings are marked by an increasingly radical Islamism. Probably his most uncompromising book is Milestones (Ma‘alim fi al-Tariq), published during his brief period of freedom and used as evidence against him in his trial. In this and other late works he is very concerned to free his thought and that of his readers from Western presuppositions, not only in politics but also in areas such as art, literature, social science and education, although he is more willing to accept Western formulations in the physical sciences and purely technical subjects, which he seems to believe can be relatively free of cultural presuppositions.12 Among these Western presuppositions is certainly the myth of progress. In what follows I shall attempt to illustrate the change in his attitude toward this myth as reflected in his writings from the early 1930’s until his death. We shall we see that he moved from a fairly standard secularist acceptance of the myth through an effort to Islamize it and finally reached a point where he had completely, or almost completely divested himself of it.
Writings of the Secularist Period Sayyid Qutb’s attitude during his secularist period can be seen from the following in a series of articles published in 1939: ‘We must unavoidably borrow from European civilization since Europe is ahead of us on the path of progress just as it borrowed from our civilization when we were ahead of it on the path of progress’.13
In the same series he describes the mentality of the traditional Islamic scholars as backward and reactionary.14 In articles in the early 1940s he encourages the adoption of new ideas about teaching from Europe and presents Great Britain as a coming model of democratic socialism.15 He sees social and political progress in Egypt over the previous fifty years and is optimistic about the future.16 Like many at the time, he looked forward to something of a brave new world after the Second World War and the language of the myth of progress appears when he speaks, for example, of developments that ‘will assure the nation that it is marching with the rest of the world toward human civilization’.17 His admiration for Western-style progress is far from unreserved, however. He sometimes suggests that the West has lost its direction; and is concerned that Egypt, and the East generally, preserve its cultural characteristics and keep to a reasonable pace of change.18 He also affirms the idea of the materialism of the West and the spirituality of the East.19 He quite strongly rejects ‘progress’ insofar as it involves a loosening of sexual morals.20 At this stage, however, his criticism of the West is balanced by much that is positive and is made in the name of concerns such as Egyptian culture or a generalized spiritual East, rather than specifically of Islam.
Writings of the Islamist Period: The Myth Islamized When Qutb’s writing takes an Islamist turn, this criticism becomes sharper and is stated in specifically Islamic terms, and progress is put on an Islamic basis. The myth of progress is Islamized. A good statement of his position is found in a collection of articles published in 1952–3 under the title Toward an Islamic Society (Nahw Mujtama‘ Islami).21 Here the
The Myth of Progress 259 image of advancing and retreating waves is used to express the progressive rise and fall of social systems. He begins by telling us that the time of the white man’s civilization is over, it has no more ideas to offer that will lead to further human progress. Its last significant contribution was the French Revolution’s ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity. The West has done as much with the first two of those as it will, while it never realized the third. True, it still innovates at the material level, but at the level of thought and spirit it has run dry. Communism is, in fact, the final stage of the West’s materialism and the West, including even America, will eventually go Communist. Once achieved, however, Communism will not last since it, too, has nothing to offer beyond the material. In fact, the ‘wave’ of materialism has about reached its fullest expansion.22 People need a new dream if they are to have a future of continual growth and progress, and the Islamic idea is the only one that can provide this. Europe might have profited from it sooner if it had not shut the door on the first ‘wave’ of Islam (i.e. in the early centuries of Islam), and in fact it did draw on Islam for its own Renaissance. Perhaps it had first to learn from its experience with materialism. The leadership of humanity is passing to Islam; indeed, if Islam did not exist, humans would have to invent something like it. The Islamic world therefore has an obligation to present Islam but to do this Islam must be reflected in its society. When Communism dominates the U.S., by the end of the twentieth century, there will be a struggle between humane values represented by Islam and materialism represented by Communism. Islam will win, since it is ‘the idea which allows life continual development in its shadow’.23 Progress in the case of Islam does not mean change in its basic principles and goals, since these are unchanging, but rather in the daily progress of humankind toward these principles and goals, which make all the so-called modern ‘progressive’ systems appear backward by comparison.24 The first wave of Islam advanced for about eight centuries and then retreated, not because it had exhausted its potential but because humanity was not yet suited for it. In fact it presented and implemented its ideals of freedom, justice, brotherhood and equality so successfully that they became ideals for all humanity. Europe in the French Revolution accepted them but could not implement them as well as Islam had in its early days. Its experience, however, has made it more capable of profiting from what Islam has to offer than at any previous time. Interestingly, this is in a way a rather Western-oriented statement. It takes for granted that ‘progress’ in recent centuries is what has happened in the West, and Islam appears here as something largely designed to meet the needs of the Western world, or at least needs generated by the Western impact. Moreover there is at least a suggestion that the Western ‘spiritual experiences, intellectual progress and scientific conquests’ may have a positive role to play in God’s plan.25
Toward the Rejection of the Myth As his writing becomes more radically Islamist, Sayyid Qutb continues to accept the reality and qualified value of material progress, but the idea of social and moral progress becomes increasingly problematic. In the introduction to Islam and the Problems of Civilization (Al-Islam wa-Mushkilat al-Hadarah), first published around 1960,26 he takes a line like that in Toward an Islamic Society, but the presentation is starker and harsher and there are fewer redeeming features in the present situation. The turn to Islam will come only at the last instant and seems less a natural dialectical swing and more a matter of direct divine guidance. Some of the ideas expressed in Toward an Islamic Society, particularly the image of advancing and retreating waves, are elaborated at greater length and in an interesting
260 W. Shepard way in another book, This Religion of Islam (Hadha al-Din), published in 1962 or earlier. The first ‘wave’ of Islam, willed by God but accomplished by human effort, was relatively brief but provided a beacon to which later humanity can aspire. Moreover, it left traces and effects in the world—represented especially in ideas, such as the ideas of the unity of the human race, of the nobility of all humans, of communities based on creed rather than race or tribe, and of international treaties and covenants, which are at least recognized, if not well implemented. When Islam came the first time it had only raw human nature (fitrah) to build on, but now it also has these traces from the first wave. Hence, humanity may now be better able to understand and respond to Islam in its second wave than in its first,28 a point which is repeated again and again in the book. This optimistic assessment is balanced, however, by the consideration that the present time is one of barbarism (Jahiliyyah) and this Jahiliyyah is more subtle and complex than the old Jahiliyyah29 since it is built on a science that rejects God. Thus, while humanity may now be in some ways better positioned to understand Islam, it is in fact the case that ‘Humanity in general today is further from God’.30 Activists must rely on the promise of God, not any supportive human factors or any progressive trends of history. Unlike the preceding works discussed, this book does not seem to expect that the Western world will go Communist.31 Even in the more optimistic part of the assessment here, a full myth of progress is absent. The language associated with the myth of progress appears only rarely and there is no sense that the second wave of Islam will reach a higher level than that of the first wave. Still, the idea that humanity as a whole may be better able to respond to Islam represents a significant degree of progress of a certain sort and there is some recognition given to Western international law and, in a slightly backhanded way, to Western ideologies, which do represent progress of a sort, and from which humanity can rise higher at the urging of Islam in its next turn.32 The main contribution of Western ideas, however, seems to be the negative experience of their deviation from Islam (this emphasis is clearer here than in Toward an Islamic Society). In The Characteristics of the Islamic Conception (Khasa’is al-Tasawwur al-Islami), probably dating also from the early 1960’s,33 the constantly repeated slogan that relates to our concern is ‘movement within a fixed orbit and about a fixed axis’.34 The fixed orbit and axis are provided by a ‘divinely given conception’ which he very strongly insists does not change or evolve.35 Indeed, the key word, ‘movement’ (harakah), seems chosen to avoid an implicit reference to progress and some of his illustrations, such as planets moving in their orbits,36 do not suggest progress. Admittedly this ‘movement’ is sometimes described as ‘development’,37 ‘progress’ or ‘forward movement’,38 but this is mainly in the areas of physical science and technology.39 He very strongly rejects what he calls ‘absolute development’,40 particularly the Marxist dialectic, in which basic philosophical ideas and basic values change, and warns that Muslims who follow Westerners in rebelling against religion ‘in the name of modernization and reform and development or in the name of escaping from the heritage of the middle ages’41 risk depriving humanity of the one true source of divine guidance. He is willing to use the language of progress to score a debater’s point, however, when he asserts that in Western terms they are actually ‘reactionaries’ and not the ‘progressives’ they claim to be, since religious and anti-Marxist thinking has become general in the West.42
Milestones: The Myth Largely Rejected
Milestones (Ma‘alim fi al-Tariq), published in 1964,43 was the last work published during Sayyid Qutb’s lifetime and was, as already mentioned, probably the most radical. At a
The Myth of Progress 261 few points it shows a positive though complex attitude toward at least the language of the myth of progress, and a continuation of the tendency to adapt that language for Islam. It assumes, as Qutb does elsewhere, that purely material technological progress has been made and explicitly recognizes that Western societies are well ahead of Muslims in this realm and will be for some time to come. But material progress alone is of very limited value. In a chapter entitled, ‘Islam Is Civilization’ he argues that a society which is materially advanced but morally and spiritually Jahili can only be considered ‘backward’. Only Islamic societies are civilized societies—indeed, the term ‘civilized’ means ‘Islamic’ and the term ‘backward’ means ‘Jahili’. Only Islamic values cause people to progress in distinctively human qualities and move away from animal qualities, and the ‘line of human progress moves in the direction of controlling animal impulses, enclosing them within the sphere of the family on the basis of duty to carry out the human task’.44 The nature of human values, however, does not ‘develop’ or change over time, as ‘progressives’ and ‘scientific socialists’ claim.45 Likewise, Islam, as sent by God, is always the same; so-called ‘progressive Islam’ is not God’s Islam but Islam with some human elements mixed in. What can happen, as already suggested in Toward an Islamic Society, is that Islam causes people to progress along the scale of fixed values. In Africa it clothed people and caused societies to develop from the tribal to the national stage. Islam can be adapted to any level of material culture and, from a strictly moral and spiritual point of view, all Islamic societies would appear to be equally civilized whatever their material level. Once its moral and spiritual principles are accepted, however, Islam does also encourage material development and material development properly undertaken is, indeed, a form of worship. When an Islamic society adds material development to its moral and spiritual accomplishment it will reach ‘the pinnacle of civilization’.46 Here material progress is not quite morally neutral, as he sometimes seems to say. Allied to Islam it has positive value. Moreover, so far as one can tell from Milestones, when an Islamic society is once again fully established it will not be at a moral level any lower than of the first Islamic society, and it will certainly be at a higher level of technology. To that extent it would presumably be better than any Islamic society of the past, even that of the prophet. This is hardly the myth of progress in its usual sense, but is perhaps a trace of that myth. These concessions to the myth of progress, if we may call them that, occur mainly in one chapter of the book, however. For the rest, the matter is different. As mentioned earlier, the book’s best known thesis is that the word Jahiliyyah does not refer only to the time of ‘ignorance’ before Muhammad but to all societies in all times and places that do not govern themselves by the Islamic creed, values and laws. Jahiliyyah and Islam are mutually exclusive and atemporal coordinates. Furthermore, there are no Islamic societies today (i.e. at the time of the writing of the book). Even those that call themselves Islamic are in fact Jahili. Where he formerly recognized a weakening of Muslim society in recent centuries, Qutb now asserts that Islam has ceased to ‘exist’. Moreover, today’s Jahiliyyah is in more open rebellion against the authority of God than the ‘simple and primitive’ Jahiliyyah of Muhammad’s time.47 There is hope, however, because what produced that unique first generation of Muslims was the Qur’an, and the Qur’an is still with us. Likewise, the method used by the prophet Muhammad, and indeed by all the prophets, to establish the Muslim community, is known and is meant for all times and places. Here there is no sense of historical progress. There is no talk of ways in which the experience of the last thirteen centuries may have prepared for a new wave of Islam.48
262 W. Shepard The gap between the present Jahiliyyah and the desired Islamic society is quite stark and apparently as great as it has ever been. The positive factors are ones that always have existed and always will, i.e. the Qur’an and the example of the Prophet. In principle, at least, the possibility of returning Islam to ‘existence’ is equally present and equally problematic at all times. This point is underlined at the end of the book by Qutb’s discussion of the Qur’anic account of the Men of the Pit (Qur’an, Chapter 85), in which believers were tortured and killed for their faith. He makes the point that what matters to the Islamic activist is his commitment and effort, not the external success which God may grant or withhold for reasons unknown to us. He uses the Quranic accounts of the prophets to indicate four possible outcomes to any Islamic movement. The movement may fail to establish itself but the believers may be saved from God’s punishment of the unbelieving society (e.g. Noah). The movement may establish itself incompletely (e.g. Moses). The movement may establish itself fully (Muhammad). The movement may fail and the believers may be killed (Men of the Pit). God alone determines which of these will be the outcome in any given case, but whatever it is, the believers will have carried out their duty and will receive an eternal reward, and this is the main consideration.49 Reading this I cannot but feel that Sayyid Qutb surmised what his own fate would be and was trying to prepare others for this apparent defeat. More relevant to our immediate concern, the presentation is such as to give the impression that one outcome is about as likely as any other at any given time, so far as human knowledge goes. This rejection of the myth of progress is confirmed by what is probably Qutb’s final word on the subject. In a passage in the posthumously published book, Components of the Islamic Conception (Muqawwima¯t al-Tasawwur al-Islami), he addresses the question more explicitly than he does in Milestones. ‘Humanity moves within a broad range; it may rise till it is higher than the angels, or descend until it is lower than the beasts. Its whole history in this respect is a series of rises and falls, and there is no one ascending line over time. Its scientific knowledge and experience in the material world and its ability to use the practical laws of the universe may indeed proceed in a rising line, but its humanity does not proceed along this line. Rather it follows the guidance of its nature (fitrah) to the soundest of conditions—that is, service to God alone and freedom from service to servants—or to deviation from that sound condition. The ascending line of science does not matter, nor does the ascending line of the facilities of material civilization. They can become causes of decline and factors in a deterioration to ‘the lowest of the low’ when they are separated from the line of truly sound ascent. ‘We have indeed created man in the best of mould, then do we abase him to be the lowest of the low, except such as believe and do righteous deeds. . .’50
With this, Qutb appears to have returned to one version of the traditional Islamic view, the view which sees no historical directionality. At one very crucial point, however, this is not the case. In its traditional forms, the Islamic view of history provided little expectation of long term positive change and little reason to work for it. In some forms, decline seemed almost inevitable. By contrast, the myth of progress has provided a motive for the acceptance of change both in the West and elsewhere. In his last stage Sayyid Qutb retains a motive for change perhaps functionally equivalent to that supplied by the myth of progress. The acceptance of technological progress provides one source of hope for permanent improvement. More important, human effort may result in positive change, not because of a trend discoverable in human history but because God may reward human effort in this way.
The Myth of Progress 263 Concluding Comments In Sayyid Qutb’s writings we can find all three of the major modern Muslim responses to the myth of progress. He first accepted it, then Islamized it, then rejected it. This trajectory is similar to that by which he rejected other key Western ideas and it seems to show very accurately what, for him, was involved in rejecting the moral and spiritual bases of the West and how thorough this rejection was. It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the degree to which his successors have or have not followed his lead here.51 Sayyid Qutb is known as a martyr (shahid) and both the English and Arabic words have the root meaning of ‘witness’. The books in which he set forth these views are still widely read and stand as a witness to his ideas and to the profound rejection of the existing system that he came to stand for. His death was a witness to his personal commitment to these views and to the price his followers would have to pay. As part of this larger witness, his views on progress and the trajectory by which he reached them, represent one continuing option for Muslims—and perhaps, mutatis mutandis, for others who find themselves at odds with ‘modernity’.
Notes 1 Akhavi, Shahrough, ‘Qutb, Sayyid’ in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, vol 3, pp. 403. 2 On the life and writings of Sayyid Qutb, see, inter alia, Akhavi, ibid., pp. 400-404, Mousalli, Ahmed Salah al-Din, Radical Islamic Fundamentalism: The Ideological and Political Discourse of Sayyid Qutb, American University of Beirut, 1992; Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi‘, Intellectual Origins of Islamic Resurgence in the Modern Arab World, Albany: SUNY Press, 1996, chs. 4–6; and William E. Shepard (trans. and intro.), Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism: A Translation and Critical Analysis of Social Justice in Islam, Leiden: Brill, l996, pp. ix-xxii. 3 Pollard, Sidney, The Idea of Progress: History and Society. London: Watts, 1968, pp. ix–x, cf. 3–4. 4 It is beyond the scope of this article to deal with the complex discussions of this and related topics by scholars over the last generation. (On this, see for example Peter Osborne, The Politics of Time: Modernity and Avant-Garde, London, New York: Verso, 1995). So far as I can tell, Sayyid Qutb was unaware of any developments in Western thinking about progress after the 1950’s. 5 Admittedly this evaluation is very much based on my intuitive perception of things as I have not had the occasion to study it systematically, though I have made a collection of statements and passages from the media, politicians, etc. here in New Zealand and elsewhere which illustrate the myth of progress being taken for granted. The current (as of this writing) New Zealand prime minister, in a television interview related to the upcoming election (6 October 1996), described his supporters as those who are looking forward and his opponents as those who are looking backward. Even where the myth of progress seems to be contradicted, as in the claim that the present generation of youth cannot expect to be better off than its parents, such a claim gains its point and poignancy precisely against the background of the expectations engendered by the myth. The following is typical of what I have in mind: ‘The notion that the plane of mankind’s spiritual development is in a process of ascension may hardly seem realistic to a generation disillusioned with the dream of progress. Everywhere is war, corruption and pollution. How could one reasonably suggest that the human race is spiritually progressing? Yet that is exactly what I suggest. Our very sense of disillusionment arises from the fact that we expect more of ourselves than our forebears did of themselves. Human behaviour that we find repugnant and outrageous today we accepted as a matter of course yesteryear.’ Peck, M. Scott, The Road Less Travelled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth, London: Arrow Books, 1990 1978, pp. 285–6. 6 These two attitudes are enshrined in two sayings ascribed to the Prophet Muhammad. According to one, ‘The best of my people are my generation; then they that come immediately after them; then they that come immediately after those.’ According to the other there will come at the beginning of each century one who renews religion; but ‘renews’ here implies at most bring things back to where they had been. For an interesting treatment of this topic see Abu Bakr Siraj ed-Din, ‘The Islamic and Christian Conceptions of the March of Time’, Islamic
264 W. Shepard
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Quarterly (1954), pp. 229–235. See also, W. Shepard, ‘The Doctrine of Progress in Some Modern Muslim Writings’, The Bulletin of the Henry Martyn Institute of Islamic Studies 10:4 (1991) pp. 51–64. Khomeini, Islam and Revolution, trans. H. Algar, Berke1ey: Mizan Press, 1981, p. 36. In discussions of the Muslim world, the term ‘secularist’ does not usually mean ‘anti-religious’ but rather desiring to separate religion from at least some aspects of social life. On the meaning of such terms as ‘secularist’, ‘modernist’, ‘Islamist’, see W. Shepard, ‘Islam and Ideology: Towards a Typology’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 19 (1987) pp. 307–36. ‘Modernity’ (‘asriyyah) carries connotations of economic progress, science, positive change, and cultural advancement.’ (Valerie Hoffman-Ladd, ‘Polemics on the Modesty and Segregation of Women in Contemporary Egypt’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 19 (1987):38) See also Shepard, ‘The Doctrine of Progress’, which presents the material in this section in greater detail and provides a more detailed bibliography. In Arabic these include taqaddum (progress or advancement), which is probably the most commonly used word in Arabic for ‘progress’, particularly in the sense of material progress, tatawwur (development, evolution), tanmiyah (growth, development) and ruqi, irtiqa*’ (ascent, advancement, progress). Ruqi and, irtiqa*’, however, may refer to moral or spiritual advancement without a historical-temporal reference in the sense involved in the myth of progress, so that their appearance is often more ambiguous. For an example of this kind of thinking see my discussion of Ahmad Amin in W. Shepard, The Faith of a Modern Muslim Intellectual (New Delhi: Indian Institute of Islamic Studies, 1982), pp. 147–58; for a forceful criticism of the same writer see Gustave Von Grunebaum, Modern Islam: The Search for Cultural Identity, New York: Vintage, 1964, pp. 366–73. See Shepard, Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism, pp. 300–20. Naqd Kitab Mustaqbal al-Thaqafah fi Misr (Critique of the Book ‘The Future of Culture in Egypt’ Jiddah: AI-Dar al-Sa‘udiyyah li-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawzi‘, 1389/1969 [originally published in Sahifat Dar al-‘UIum, 1939], p. 28. Ibid., pp. 53, 74. Respectively: ‘Al-kutub al-madrasiyyah (School Books)’, Majallat al-Shu’un al-Ijtima‘iyyah (Journal of Social Affairs), Year 1, No. 8 (1359/1940); *‘Alam jadid fi tayyat hadha al-jahim (A New Year inside this Hell)’, ibid., Year 2 (1360/1941), No. 8. ‘Mizaniyyatuna al-qawmiyyah tad‘u ila al-amal wa-l-tafa’ul (Our National Balance Sheet Calls for Hope and Optimism).’ ibid., Year 2, No. 12, and ‘Hal nahnu mutahaddirun? (Are We Civilized?).’ ibid., Year 3, No. 4; and ‘Fi al-mustaqbal amal wa-furas muhayya’ah li-l-istighlal (In the Future, Hopes and Opportunities Ready to be Taken)’, ibid., Year 4 (1943), No. 2. ‘Fi mafraq al-tariq bayn al-qawmiyyah wa-l-‘alamiyyah (At the Crossroads between Nationalism and Internationalism).’ ibid., Year 4, No. 11; ‘Halqah mafqudah fi nahdatina al-‘aqliyyah al-hadithah (A Missing Link in Our Modern Intellectual Renaissance).’ ibid., Year 4, No. 2, p. 27; cf. ‘Alam al-mustaqbal wa-baramij al-shabab (The World of the Future and the Programs for Youth).’ ibid., Year 6, No. 7. ‘Al-‘alam yajri (The world runs)’, Al-Risalah, 10 Dec. 1933, pp 12–13.; ‘‘Daribat al-tatawwur (The Tax Imposed by Development)’, Majallat al-Shu’un al-Ijtima‘iyyah ( Journal of Social Affairs), Cairo, Year 1, No. 6; Mustaqbal al-Thaqafah, p. 30–1. Mustaqbal al-Thaqafah, pp. 32–3; ‘Alam jadid’, Majallat al-Shu’un al-Ijtima‘iyyah, Year 2, No 8. ‘Fi al-mustaqbal amal wa-furas muhayya’ah li-l-istighlal’, ibid., Year 4, No. 1. See his articles in the Cairo literary magazine, Al-Risalah, 3 June. 1945, pp. 1309–10, 6 Aug 1946, pp. 856–8. Published originally as a series of articles under this general title in Al-Muslimun, a magazine of the Muslim Brotherhood, and republished after the author’s death as a book by the same title. My copy is the 6th ed., Dar al-Shuruq, 1983/1403. Interestingly, this view seems to owe something to Marxist dialectics. In criticizing Marxism he appears to accept something like its dialectical view of history, except, of course, that Marxist society is not the end of the dialectical process (cf. Khasa’is al-Tasawwur al-Islami (The Characteristics of the Islamic Conception), eighth edition (Cairo and Beirut: Dar al-Shuruq, 1403/1983), p.81). He speaks of the wave of Communism reaching its limit (Nahw Mujtama‘ Islami, pp. 31–2). Nahw Mijtama‘ Islami, p.40. Nahw Mujtama‘ Islami, p. 75; pp. 67–8; cf. 40–1.
The Myth of Progress 265 25 ‘. . . humanity was not all prepared to receive this light and benefit from it (i.e. Islam) in its first shining forth, and it needed long experience and a violent reaction against the first asceticism (i.e. Christianity) and the first ignorance, by which it was thrust violently into the world of matter to invent in that world what God willed it to invent, and to prepare itself by its spiritual experience, intellectual progress and scientific conquests to accept that light in its next time around.’ (Nahw Mujtama‘ Islami, p. 33). 26 My edition is Dar al-Shuruq, 1303 /1983. 27 The copies available to me are: Hadha al-Din (Beirut, etc.: Al-Ittihad Al-Islami Al-‘Alami, 1978); English translation: This Religion of Islam (Kuwait: International Islamic Federation of Student Organizations, 1982). Note that all translations from Qutb in this article are directly from the Arabic and may or may not coincide with the published translations to which reference is given for the benefit of the reader. 28 Hadha al-Din, pp. 84–9; This Religion of Islam, pp. 85–93. 29 The word Jahiliyyah is used both for Arab society just before the time of Muhammad and, by writers such as Qutb, for contemporary societies that they do not consider Islamic. 30 Hadha al-Din, pp. 92-–6, 90; This Religion of Islam, pp 95–8, 92. 31 Compare the shift away from this idea in the last edition of Social Justice in Islam (Shepard, Sayyid Qutb, ch. 9). 32 Hadha al-Din, pp. 86–91; This Religion of Islam, pp. 88–93. 33 My copy is the eighth edition, Cairo and Beirut: Dar al-Shuruq, 1403/1983. There is an English translation, The Islamic Concept and Its Characteristics, trans. M. M. Siddiqui, Indianapolis: American Trust Publications, 1991. 34 Ibid., esp. pp. 72–90 (English translation, pp. 67–83). 35 Ibid., pp. 78, 84–85, 87, etc. (English translation, pp. 73, 77–78, 80). 36 Ibid. p. 73 (English translation, pp. 68). 37 Tatawwur or tatwir, and tarqiyah, ibid. 38 Harakah ila al-amam, ibid., p. 84 (English translation, pp. 77). 39 E.g. Ibid., pp. 75–6 (English translation, p. 70). 40 Ibid., pp. 83, 87 (English translation, pp. 76, 80). 41 Ibid., p. 90 (English translation, p. 82). 42 Ibid. 43 My copy of the Arabic text of Ma‘alim fi al-Tariq is Beirut: Dar al-Shuruq, 1393/1973; English translation: Milestones. Kuwait: International Islamic Federation of Student Organizations, 1398/1978. 44 Ma‘alim, p. 114; Milestones, p. 185. 45 There are no ‘agrarian’ or ‘industrial’, or ‘capitalist’ or ‘socialist’, or ‘bourgeois’ or ‘proletarian’ values, there are only human values or animal values, i.e. Islamic or Jahili values. Ma‘alim, pp. 110–11; Milestones, pp. 18l–2. 46 Ma‘alim, p. 115; Milestones, p. 187. 47 Ma‘alim, p. 8; Milestones, p. 15. 48 We may also note that in Social Justice in Islam, a relatively optimistic paragraph about increasing human readiness to benefit from Islam which was added to the third edition is eliminated from the sixth edition (Shepard, Sayyid Qutb, p. 348). Likewise, any talk of an Islamic bloc or of the West going communist is eliminated; stress is on the stark contrast between Islam and Jahiliyyah. (ibid., ch. 9). 49 Ma‘alim, pp. 173–82; Milestones pp. 281–96. 50 Qur’an, Chapter 95, verses 4–6); Muqawwimat al-Tasawwur al-Islami (Components of the Islamic Conception). 4th Printing. Dar al-Shuruq, 1408/1988), p. 368. 51 My impression is that many would retain more of the myth of progress than he does, but Abd al-Salam Farag, the ideologue of the Jihad group responsible for the assassination of Anwar al-Sadat in Egypt seems to me to be far more traditional. See Shepard, ‘The Doctrine of Progress’, p. 53. Khomeini, after the revolution, took the view that the present generation in Iran is better even than the generation of the time of ‘Ali, the first Shi’i Imam, although he did not, of course, claim that the revolutionary leadership was better than the Imam and his closest followers. My own view is that Khomeini’s view in relation to progress is essentially the same as Qutb’s latest view as he probably would have articulated it had he experienced a successful Islamic revolution.
266 W. Shepard WILLIAM SHEPARD is Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Canterbury. He graduated from Swarthmore College, took a Master of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary (New York City), and a Ph.D. from Harvard. He is particularly interested in modern Islamic thought and has published two books on 20th century Egyptian Muslim thinkers. The most recent of these is Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism (Brill, 1996), a translation and critical analysis of one of Qutb’s major works. Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Canterbury, Private Bay 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand.