In the second, increased and revised edition of the book "In the Shadows of the Qur'an", Sayyid Qutb formulated main ideas with which he overcame the Brotherhood ideology founded by Hassan al-Banna. Muslim societies (monotheism is political and legal governance), and that the comprehensive Islamic system does not accept subjugation (an absolute system), and it only moves in an environment that makes it (purity and emotional isolation).
Thus Sayyed pushed the idea of a comprehensive system to its extreme, and arranged new provisions on it on the Brotherhood’s thought that brought it closer to external thought, and for this reason Sayed was a major reference for the groups affiliated with the jihad.
He formulated - in fact - the theoretical statement or the movement approach based on revolutionary, absolute and puristic, then the violent groups came and found the means to implement that theoretical program, and transferred it from the "jurisprudence of papers" to the "jurisprudence of movement" in the language of his master himself.
In this article, I will explain the features of the systematic change that occurred to Sayyid as it appeared in the second version of "In the Shadows of the Qur'an", and I will clarify the intellectual structure or the fruit of this systematic change that permeated the augmented and revised version, and I will dedicate another article to explain the impact of shadows on violent groups later And how its theorists built on these recent developments by Sayyid, especially in the shadows, which some considered "the true interpretation."
Syed repeatedly talked about the roundness of time as it was when this religion came, and about the similarity of our situation today to the situations that the Prophet, may God’s prayers and peace be upon him, faced, or to the conditions after his death and the occurrence of apostasy, and that we are in a state “like what the believers were in at the beginning of the jihad.”
Features of the systematic change in the second version of the shadows
Let's start with the features of systemic change.
Sayed established - in the second version of "The Shadows" - a new methodology by which he went beyond the approach he took in the first version, centered on the interpretation of the text from the perspective of lived reality, where the meaning or truth of the text appears only through 3 things that illustrate how Sayed broke with the historical Islamic tradition.
These things are:
First: The kinetic approach is the one that reveals the meaning and reality of the text
The kinetic approach of the master of movement means the text or the battle with what he calls "contemporary ignorance" or "present-day ignorance", and the struggle to confront the transformations that afflicted the Muslim nation.
Reality and the transformations it undergoes are key to understanding the text, and through this interaction between the text and reality, the “jurisprudence of movement” that seeks to change the world is formed.
The jurisprudence of the movement is necessary to confront these changes that afflicted Islamic societies and brought them back into the mire of the first ignorance, and imposed the resumption of Islam, which ceased to exist according to the perspective of a master.
The battle, then, is necessary not only for defense nor for realistic necessities, but it is also necessary for understanding the meaning of the text, as it is what generates the true meaning of it, and it is a soft, tender meaning that only the Mujahideen who are moved by the text in reality, and not the scholars, comprehend.
That is why Sayyid decided more than once that “the revealing glimpses of this religion are only evident to those who move with it as a jihadist movement because of its establishment in people’s lives, and are not evident to those absorbed in books who devote themselves to papers,” and that “the jurisprudence of this religion does not emerge except in the land of movement, and it is not taken from a jurist.” It sits where movement is necessary,” and that “those who move with this religion in the face of ignorance (…) are the only ones who understand this Qur’an, and realize the true dimensions of the meanings of its texts, and they are the only ones who have the ability to derive the jurisprudence of movement.”
The kinetic approach meant bypassing the "artistic approach" that it took in the first version of Shadows, even if it did not definitively return from it, because it remained important for analyzing the form of the text from a literary perspective related to language, but Sida now sees - in the second version - that the "graphic or artistic" study For the text, it is nothing but a “cold, still sitting,” with which its owner does not realize anything of the truth of the text, because “the Qur’an is only tasted by those who fight such a battle, and face such situations in which it was revealed to confront and direct them.”
Second: The concept of governance, which is one of the pillars of Sayed's intellectual structure, is key to understanding the text
That is, it is a framing concept that has an interpretive energy that reveals the meaning of the text.
Hence, the Qur’anic word “does not give its true meaning except to the heart that is open to it, and the mind that anticipates and accepts it,” according to the concept of governance.
The Qur’an “does not open its treasures, does not reveal its secrets, and does not give its fruits except to a people who believe” in it, that special belief with revolutionary political content and hadith based on political and legal governance. That is why Sayed insisted on the idea of resuming the Islamic call again, and that the Qur’an returned to “confront humanity as it faced it.” The first time”, meaning that the text has become a fighting text, and its interpretation is like downloading it, and the present ignorance is like the first ignorance, and conscience remained its central role for Sayed in the process of understanding and receiving the text as it was in his first approach, but faith has become a revolutionary faith.
This is an important difference that distinguishes Syed's perception from the perception of the Sufis who attach great importance to the purity of the heart and the exposure of insight in capturing the meaning of the text.
Third: Jahiliyyah is a key to describing the existing reality and its transformations, i.e. the context that helps to understand the text on the one hand, and is the subject of the required change on the other hand.
Contemporary ignorance is similar to the first ignorance, and it is this similarity that helps to understand the text at the moment of downloading.
That is why Syed spoke repeatedly about the roundness of time as it was when this religion came, and about the similarity of our situation today to the situations that the Prophet, may God’s prayers and peace be upon him, faced, or to the conditions after his death and the occurrence of apostasy, and that we are in a state “like what the believers were in at the beginning of the jihad.”
However, this interpretive vision led to two dangerous things:
Takfir of Muslims, so “Those who differentiate - in religion - between belief and transactions are not believers
, no matter how much they claim to believe and declare - with their tongues or even with other rituals of worship - that they are believers.” Thus, all the sins committed by Muslims led to the loss of faith from their souls, and then the master transcended Here is the distinction made by the jurists between the theoretical and the practical, that is, between those who do not do negligence or laziness (such as one who believes but falls short in his work), and one who is a non-believer (denying in belief and deed), because the concept of a master of monotheism centers around political and legal governance and is not consistent with That elaboration or distinction between the theoretical and the practical, or between the doctrinal and the jurisprudential, which is a methodological issue established by the jurists and theologians.
Dropping the provisions of the first ignorance on contemporary reality.
The description of the contemporary, present, or comprehensive ignorance (which are expressions that are frequently repeated in the augmented and revised version) led to wrong implications for Sayyid, such as the belief that there is no single independent jurisprudential rule that lives in a pre-Islamic void, but that the rule operates in its “appropriate environment”, which is the environment itself. In which judgment arose for the first time and turned into practice or action, and then it is not permissible to ijtihad for this pre-Islamic society, because any ijtihad for it is patching and mixing the purity of truth with the impurities of falsehood, and it is a branch of the conception of faith and monotheism that does not annihilate, and of governance in which a society is not distinguished. For a governing authority with a master.
That is why he founded the idea of "emotional isolation" and the "vanguard" fighter animated by the Qur'an that leads the reins of change and establishes the Muslim society anew.
This methodology, with its three previous features (activity, governance, and ignorance), meant resuming Islam, transcending the Islamic tradition and its legacy, and breaking with the historical experience and understanding of Islam. Or it has no meaning other than this meaning mentioned by Sayyid and the jihadists after him, so the distance between the text and the interpretation has disappeared.
The world is divided - "in the eyes of Islam and in the consideration of a Muslim," as Sayyid put it - into two parts: Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb, and there is no third for them.
Hence, Dar al-Harb becomes a house of permissiveness of souls, rights, and money, as only Dar al-Islam deserves to preserve blood, money, and public order.
The intellectual structure or the fruit of this systemic change
As for the intellectual structure that resulted from the systematic change in dealing with the Quranic text of Sayed, it revolves around 3 main pillars:
Governance in the sense that divinity is a ruling authority over the details and subtleties of life (sovereignty in the modern sense).
And the vision of the world based on clash and articulation, where the conflict is at its most intense between Islam and contemporary ignorance.
Jihad as a coup and revolution to change the world at the hands of the "believing vanguard" entrusted with transferring the public from ignorance to Islam.
As for hakimiyya, a concept that dominates the second version of the shadows, it is a presumption of the testimony of monotheism and one of its requirements. Sayyid took this idea from Abu al-Ala al-Mawdudi, who formulated it in the context of the struggle of Indian Muslims to establish their own political entity in Pakistan.
We
can observe 3 characteristics of governance at Qutb:
The first: that governance is the main expression of the meaning of monotheism, and this is repeated in places in the second version of the shadows, so the testimony of monotheism (there is no god but God) means “singling out God with governance that makes legislation - starting with - a right of God, that no one else shares in it, and the lack of arbitration To the juggernaut in a lot or a little, and to return to God and the Messenger in what is not mentioned in the text.
Syed refers here to 3 components that include legislative governance by the rulers, submission to all those provisions by the governed, and recognition of governance even in the absence of a text.
This three-dimensional concept led to the proof of Sayyed's "correlation between (God's religion) and (ruling by what God has revealed)", and thus the political, legal, jurisprudential and doctrinal intertwined together to form a political ideology whose sole manifestation is the system of government in the contemporary world.
The second: that the previous triple meaning included expiating the rulers and the ruled who did not achieve the concept of governance or even were judged by some man-made laws and from this aspect contemporary societies deserved the description of Jahiliyyah.
Syed says in the second version of Al-Dilal: “Whoever obeys a human being in a law from himself, even in a small part, then he is a polytheist. And if he was originally a Muslim and then did it, then he only got out of Islam to polytheism as well, whatever remains after that he says: I bear witness that There is no god but God with his tongue, while he receives from other than God, and obeys other than God.When we look at the face of the earth today in the light of these decisive statements, we see ignorance and polytheism - and nothing but ignorance and polytheism - except for those who protected God, so he denied the earthly lords what they claim It is one of the characteristics of divinity, and it was not accepted by law or judgment except within the limits of coercion
Rather, the doctrine adopted by Al-Qaeda in the priority of fighting the near over the far finds its root in the second version of the shadows when Sayed says: “
Islam tolerates this tolerance with those who oppose it openly during the day in the creed, but it does not tolerate this tolerance with those who say Islam by word of mouth.” Actions lie.
He does not tolerate those who say: They unite God and bear witness that there is no god but God, then they recognize other than God a characteristic of divinity, such as governance and legislation for people.
The third: that jihad is one of the requirements of governance.
If the first feature of governance formulates the concept of monotheism, and the second feature evaluates people and reality based on this new concept of monotheism, then the third feature of governance provides the appropriate means to change this reality to match that concept.
A master in the shadows says: One of the necessities of governance is that “he strives, then, for divinity to become God alone in the earth (…) so that the approach that God wanted for people (…) becomes the prevailing, prevailing, and obeyed approach, and it is the system that directs all people’s lives without exception (…) and it is The meaning of the testimony that (there is no god but God and that Muhammad is the Messenger of God) and its requirements, not what the meaning of this testimony has concluded from concessions, insignificance and loss.
Governance - in Sayed's concept - is not only a key to understanding the text, but rather lays the foundation for his worldview, and claims to understand the transformations of reality that take us back to a moment similar to the first ignorance, and then the meaning of the text is re-introduced.
There are 3 main features of Syed’s vision of the world, which are mentioned in several places in the second version of Shadows, as follows:
The first insinuation: that the world is divided - “in the eyes of Islam and in the consideration of a Muslim” as Sayed put it - into two parts: Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb, and there is no third for them
.
Hence, Dar al-Harb becomes a house of permissiveness of souls, rights, and money, as only Dar al-Islam deserves to preserve blood, money, and public order.
As for Dar al-Harb, "it does not have the right, nor the right of its people, to enjoy the guarantees provided by the penalties of Islamic law (...), because it does not recognize the rule of Islam."
The second hint: that the abode of Islam has disappeared, due to the absence of governance
, and that is why Sayyid speaks in one place about “the region that was once the abode of Islam governed by God’s law,” and that the only way to escape is separation and doctrinal and emotional isolation from the people of this ignorance.
Isolation is a system of life until it is possible to establish the abode of Islam.
Sayyed says: "There is no escape for the Muslim community - in every land - from this torment falling upon it," unless:
Doctrinally, emotionally, and way of life separated from the people of Jahiliyyah from her people until God permits her to establish Dar al-Islam.
"And I felt fully that it is the Muslim nation, and that what is around it and those around it who did not enter into what it entered into, are ignorant and the people of ignorance."
3. The
third hint: that the abode of Islam, which has turned into an abode of infidelity, takes all the provisions of the abode of infidelity that were established for the first abode of infidelity on a phased basis until the abode of Islam is re-established
.
Sayyed says: "As for today, the earth has returned to ignorance and the rule of God - Glory be to Him - has lifted from the life of people on earth, and the rulership has returned to the tyrant in the whole earth, and people have entered into the worship of servants after Islam expelled them from it. Now another new round begins for Islam - like the round The first - it takes in the organization all its interim provisions until it ends with the establishment of a house of Islam and migration, then the shadows of Islam extend again, God willing, so it will not return to migration, but jihad and work, as happened in the first round.
Sayed also - in the second version of the shadows - reformulated the concept of jihad based on Abi Al-Ala Al-Mawdudi.
Jihad in its new concept has 3 main features, as it appears in the augmented and revised version of The Shadows, which are:
The first characteristic: that jihad is part of the faith and a measure of a man’s faith
, as it is a deep and authentic element “in the Islamic faith, in the Islamic system, and in the realistic requirements of this divine approach.”
And since the movement in the text is the one that reveals its meaning and truth, the jihad of contemporary ignorance becomes a scale by which a man's faith and devotion to religion are weighed, as was the case in the first ignorance.
While we find that some of the Shafi’i jurists stipulated that jihad is only obligatory by means, not by ends, and that jihad against the infidels is intended to guide them, not fight them.
The second feature: that the new concept of jihad is based on monotheism and governance, and therefore it is "a revolution against the earthly authority that usurps the first characteristics of divinity
, and a revolution against the conditions that are based on a foundation of this usurpation, and a departure from the authorities that rule by a law from themselves that God did not authorize." Says master.
Rather, jihad becomes the way to find Islam, which ceased to exist in our time, and "the continuous pursuit and continuous struggle for the sake of establishing the system of truth is nothing else."
Indeed, Islam itself becomes - according to Mawdudi, who Sayyed quotes - "a revolutionary idea, a revolutionary approach that wants to destroy the entire social world system and build it from the rules, and establish its structure anew according to his idea and practical approach."
The third feature: that the two previous features lead to the fact that jihad is not a defensive movement
"as the defeated in the face of the pressure of the present reality and in the face of the attack of the cunning Orientalists want to portray," according to Sayed, but rather it is "a movement of impulsiveness and launching to liberate man on earth by means equivalent to all aspects of human reality. And in specific stages, and each stage has its own renewable means.” That is why jihad became intended to change the systems of government and the pre-Islamic reality and to resume or create Islam.
Thus, the additions made by Sayed Ali to "In the Shadows of the Qur'an" resulted in a change in the approach and a shift in vision from the artistic approach to the kinetic approach, as he added interpretive concepts and built sharp and defining perceptions that led to new meanings outside the Islamic tradition, and cut off with the Brotherhood thought that he belonged to. To him first, and formed a supporter of Salafi jihadism, as we will explain in a later article, God willing.