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a lasting impact on him and generated a series of influential books
which became the inspiration of radical Muslims practicing violence
from the Philippines to Africa. The novelty in Qutb was not so much his
anti-Westernism, anti modernism, or reinterpretation of Islam, which
can be found in other Islamic thinkers, but his argument that most if not
all existing Muslim regimes were also corrupt and sinful (the term used
is
yahiliya
which can be translated as pagan, or, perhaps more correctly
barbaric-the state of affairs prevailing before Mohammed appeared)
and had to be combated and overthrown. This innovation brought him
into conflict with the leadership of his own country; he was kept in
prison for years under Nasser and was eventually hanged in
1966.
In
view of the influence his writings had posthumously-among his
disciples were the murderers of Anwar Sadat-the preoccupation with
Qutb is of course perfectly legitimate. But Professor Euben combines it
with a critique of the legacy of the Enlightenment and modern rational–
ism; she considers Marx a fellow critic in this campaign, which may
come as a surprise to most Marxists. This is a learned book, the envoi
is from Nietzsche's
The Birth of Tragedy
and there are frequent refer–
ences to Foucault, Hannah Arendt, Heidegger, Adorno, Bourdieu, and
even Hans-Georg Gadamer. But are these thinkers really of much help
to explain Sayyid Qutb who belongs to another tradition? About as
much, I suspect, as to explain the Lubavicher Rebbe or Pat Robertson.
Viewed in retrospect, attacks against the heritage of the Enlighten–
ment and rationalism, assaults on Western civilization and humanism
were quite fashionable during the latter part of the nineteenth century.
This is a study in comparative political theory and Professor Euben
could have done worse than pointing to some of the predecessors. She
would have found
The War Against the West,
a book by Aurel Kolnai,
an Austro-Hungarian psychoanalyst published in
T938
(unfortunately
out of print for a long time) very useful. It's a compilation and critique
of anti-Enlightenment writings of the twenties and thirties which in
many ways anticipates the arguments of the fundamentalists on martyr–
dom and moral purity, on social justice, and about any other subject
close to the heart of contemporary fundamentalists.
But there is an even more striking parallel, not with German National
Socialism, suspicious of and averse to religion, but the Romanian fas–
cists of the Archangel Michael variety, combining deep religiosity with
the unity of the nation, submission to God, hate of the foreigners (infi–
dels), anti-liberalism, anti-rationalism, and a firm belief in political vio–
lence. Professor Euben, to be sure, is not uncritical of the "progressive"
claims of Muslim fundamentalism. She does know that while the
