ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Democracy in Islamic Political Thought [Sayyid Qutb (1906-66) and Mawdudi (1903-79)] Sayyid Qutb (1906-66), who was imprisoned for ten years in 1954 and then executed in 1966, became the leading ideologue of the Muslim Brotherhood from the mid-fifties.

His book Milestones, which was written in response to Nassir's persecution of the Ikhwan, acquired a wide acceptance throughout the Arab world after his execution and following the defeat of the Arabs in the 1967 War with Israel.

In it, he put forward the thesis of Jahiliyyah (ignorance, barbarity or idolatry), from which Islam came to deliver the world.[^39] Qutb divided social systems into two categories: the order of Islam and the order of Jahiliyyah, which was decadent and ignorant, the type which had existed in Arabia before the received the Word of God, when men revered not God but other men disguised as deities.[^40] Muslim society, according to him, was itself divided into two realms, that of Islam and that of Jahiliyyah.

This was clearly expressed by Qutb in Milestones as follows: 'Jahiliyyah is now present not only in the capitalist West and the Communist East, it has also infected the world of Islam. All that is around us is Jahiliyyah.

Peoples' imaginings, their beliefs, customs, and traditions, the sources of their culture, their art and literature, their laws and statutes, much even of what we take to be Islamic culture, Islamic authorities, Islamic philosophy, Islamic thought: all this too is of the making of this Jahiliyyah.'[^41] Drawing from the theory of Mawdudi (1903-79) that as Islam has reverted to a state of Jahiliyyah, true Muslims find themselves in a state of war against the apostates, Sayyid Qutb concluded that true Muslims, the tali'ah (vanguards), are and must be set apart within the ambient infidel society as a sort of 'counter-society'.

In his trial statement, Sayyid Qutb declared: 'We are the ummah of the believers, living within a jahili society. Nothing relates us to state or to society and we owe no allegiance to either. As a community of believers we should see ourselves in a state of war with the state and the society.'[^42] However, as far as democracy is concerned Qutb seemed to develop his own theory.

In this he went much farther than Mawdudi, rejecting the concept altogether, denouncing it as alien, incompatible and jahili.