Understanding the Adversary: Sayyid Qutb and the ... - Australian Army

Terrorism Peta TarlintonJahiliyyaThe term jahiliyya means to be ‘in ignorance of divine guidance’. In his manifesto,Milestones, Qutb writes that the world is divided into two kinds of societies:Muslim and non-Muslim jahiliyya (ignorant) societies. In Muslim societies, Islamis applied to all aspects of life through observance of Shari’ah. Consequently, Qutbbelieved that Islamic society was, ‘by its very nature, the only civilised society, andthe jahili societies, in all their various forms, are backward societies. It is necessaryto elucidate this great truth’. 7 Qutb defined a jahili society as any society that ‘doesnot dedicate itself to submission to God alone, in its beliefs, in its observances ofworship and its legal regulations’. Jahili included all Christian and Jewish societiesas well as all ‘idolatrous societies’, with specific reference to countries such as Japanand the Philippines, and some countries in Africa. 8As Qutb believed that Jews and Christians had distorted their original beliefsin the infallibility of God’s law by conceding legislative power to secular authority,they were jahiliyya—the enemy. The West’s defection from the ‘way of God’ camethrough its secularism of political and administrative life by a conscious separationof church and state. Qutb ruled out any accommodation with the jahili system. Theonly proper Muslim relationship with jahiliyya was one of complete rejection. Assuch, those Muslim societies that chose to incorporate elements of jahili systemsinto the Islamic framework—that is, through the adoption of a secular governmentor legal systems—were also jahiliyya. As the enemy of Islam they were to bedestroyed. For Qutb jahiliyya societies are incapable of offering an individual truefreedom. He argues:When, in a society, the sovereignty belongs to God alone, expressed in its obedience tothe Divine Law, only then is every person in that society free from servitude to others,and only then does he taste true freedom. This alone is ‘human civilisation’. 9In Qutb’s view, Western society bestowed higher value on materialism ratherthan on the dignity of the individual. If materialism dominated, as was the casewith the United States and Europe, and ‘all otherhuman values are sacrificed at its altar, then sucha society is backward’. 10 Consequently, such asociety could not confer freedom in the real sensebut offered only a degraded and regressive existence.Submission to a human authority not sanctionedby God meant that individual freedomwould be lost to a material world susceptible tocorruption. In this way, the roots of jahili societybecame mere human desires, ‘which do not letIn Qutb’s view, Westernsociety bestowed highervalue on materialismrather than on thedignity of the individual.page 176 Volume II, Number 2 Australian Army Journal