1. Author: Juliet Davis
Not for Replication without Author Consent
The Radicalisation of Sayyid Qutb
The life and work of Sayyid Qutb remain the subject of intense fascination among many scholars of
Islamism. Whilst his eventual transition from secular Muslim intellectual to radical Islamist is apparent
in Qutb’s writings and political actions, scholarly debate continues to rage regarding the impetus for his
radicalisation. In examining the historiography surrounding Qutb’s ideological conversion, this essay
seeks to argue that Qutb did not undergo a smooth progression from secular thought to moderate and,
later, radical Islamism. Rather, it is claimed that both personal experiences and Qutb’s social, political
and economic environment caused him to experiment with differing ideologies, including nationalism,
Easternism and Islamism. It is asserted that Qutb’s Islamist ideology was finally radicalised during his
imprisonment by the Nasser government in the years 1955 to 1964. This radicalisation may be
demonstrated by his rejection of secular forms of community, which he embraced in his earlier
nationalist and Easternist writings, in favour of an ideological Islamic state.During this period Qutb also
abandoned his moderate reformist agenda in favour of a revolutionary ideology which advocated the
overthrow of all non-Islamic states.
Whilst it is largely undisputed among scholars that Qutb underwent a process of radicalisation,
a significant historiographical debate revolves around whether Qutb’s radicalisation was brought about
by a specific ‘turning point’ or whether it was a gradual process. In the former camp, scholars such as
Yvonne Haddad, tend to assume a sharp distinction between Qutb’s earlier incantation as a poet and a
writer and his later role as a ‘mature thinker of Qur’anic exegesis’.1
Both Emmanuel Sivan and M.M.
Siddiqui promote Qutb’s two year sojourn in the United States of America as “the formative experience
that converted him […] to fundamentalism”2
by “open[ing] his eyes to the ravages wrought by Godless
materialism on the spiritual, social and economic life of the people”.3
Likewise, Muhammad Tawfiq
Barakat attributes Qutb’s radicalisation to his hearing of a speech by Hasan al-Banna,the founder of the
Muslim Brotherhood.4
Such a deterministic stance is however criticised by proponents of the ‘gradual
1 James Toth, Sayyid Qutb: The Life and Legacy of a Radical Islamic Intellectual (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2013), 5.
2 Emmanuel Sivan, Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1985), 22 cited in John Calvert, ‘”The World is an Undutiful Boy!”: Sayyid Qutb's American Experience’, Islam
and Christian–MuslimRelations,11, 1, 2000, 89.
3 M.M. Siddiqui, ‘About the Author: An Outline of Sayyid Qutb’s Life’ in Sayyid Qutb, Milestones,
(Indianapolis: American Trust, 1990), viii.
4 Toth, Qutb: The Life, chapter 3, note 3, n.p.

2. 2
transition’ thesis, such as Adnan A.Musallam, who argue that“it…fail[s] to take into accountthe various
forces that worked to shape Qutb’s personality and outlook on life, for example his upbringing, religious
training, personal disappointments, and the state of Egyptian life and society in the first half of this
century.”5
Despite their rejection of the ‘turning point’ thesis in favour of recognising a range of
radicalising forces, gradualists such as Musallam, William E. Shepard, John Calvert and James Toth
place varying emphasis upon the impact of various public and private crises that Qutb experienced.
Musallam, echoed to a certain extent by Toth, takes an almost Freudian view of Qutb’s radicalism,
claiming that Qutb embraced Islam as a means of soothing the “pain, alienation, and unhappiness”
stemming from his “mother’s death in 1939 and a ‘shattered love affair’ in or around 1942 or 1943,
together with his deteriorating health”.6
In contrast to perceiving Qutb’s radicalism as the product of
impulse and emotion, Shepard and Calvert consider Qutb’s transition to be an ideologically deliberate
reaction to both external political crises and the writings of other Islamist intellectuals such as Abul Ala
Mawdudi.7
However,Calvert also recognises that Qutb’s embrace of Islam fulfilled not only a “political
need” but also a “deep spiritual need”.8
In line with the ‘gradual transition’ thesis, this essay seeks to argue that Qutb’s radicalisation
cannot be attributed to one single defining event. Nor does it regard Qutb’s ideological change as a mere
emotional search for meaning and spiritual respite. Rather, it is argued that Qutb amended his outlook
as a deliberate reaction to shifting political, social and economic exigencies in contemporary Egyptian
society. Such ideological transitions were later confirmed by particular episodes in Qutb’s personal life
including the infamous trip to the United States of America. In order to determine the validity of this
thesis, it is necessary to examine how the events of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s contributed to his
ideological transition from Egyptian nationalism, to Easternism and finally to Islamism.
Born in 1906 in the village of Musha in the province of Asyut, Sayyid Qutb spent half of his life
as a secular Muslim intellectual.9
Like many young Egyptian intellectuals in the wake of the 1919
5 Adnan A. Musallam, Sayyid Qutb: The Emergence of the Islamicist, 1939–1950 (Jerusalem: Palestinian
Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, 1990), 6–7, 113 cited in Toth, Qutb: The Life, chapter 3,
note 3, n.p.
6 Musallam, Sayyid Qutb: The Emergence, 6–7, 113 cited in Toth, Qutb: The Life, chapter3, note 3, n.p.
7 William E. Shepard, ‘The Development of the Thought of Sayyid Quṭb as Reflected in Earlier and Later
Editions of' Social Justice in Islam', Die Welt des Islams, 32, 2, 1992, 217.
8 John Calvert, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010),
127–128.
9 William E. Shepard, ‘Sayyid Qutb’s Doctrine of Jahiliyya’, International Journal ofMiddle East Studies,35, 4,
2003, 521.

3. 3
popular uprisings, Qutb was drawn to the Egyptian nationalist movement’s struggle to rid Egypt of its
political and economic ties to the British. The chief influences of his ideology during this period were
the doctrines of the popular nationalist Wafd party, which he joined after graduating from the Dar al-
‘Uloom in 1933,10
and the writings of his liberal intellectual mentor Abbas Mahmud al-Aqqad.11
In
particular, Qutb was concerned with the continued manipulation of Egyptian politics and economic
policies by the British. He denounced this lack of Egyptian state sovereignty as leading to economic
exploitation, domestic unemployment, limited internal development and social inequalities.12
However,by the mid-to late 1930s, Qutb became increasingly disenchanted with the nationalist
agenda and its promotion of westernised modernity. Critical to this disillusionment was the Wafd’s
failure to act decisively against the British and other colonial powers in negotiating the Anglo-Egyptian
Treaty of 1936 and the Montreux Convention of 1937,13
its reluctance to support paramilitary activity in
the occupied Canal Zone and its lack of support for Palestinian Arabs against Zionist settlement in their
territory.14
Qutb was also critical of many members of the political elite for their mimicry of western
European customs, regarding such imitation to be both a sign of political obsequiousness and corruption
as well as an unwarranted cultural abasement.15
Confronted with the seeming failure of the Egyptian nationalist project, Qutb moved
increasingly away from the western model of the modern nation-state and instead embraced theories of
‘Easternism’, ‘Pharaonism’, ‘pan-Arabism’ and ‘Islamism’ which sought to celebrate Egypt’s unique
cultural, ethnic and religious identity and the traditional bonds between the Eastern states.16
Drawing
upon these theories, Qutb regarded Egypt as the predominant civilisation within the Eastern world,
whose “Pharaonic civilization, its history, aesthetic styles and modern relevance”17
rendered it uniquely
qualified to lead the ‘cultural reawakening’ of the Muslim and Arabic-speaking states in the East.18
Palestine’s Great Rebellion in 1936 to 1939 further strengthened Qutb’s desire for the establishment of
a unified cultural and political Arab entity.19
Thus, in 1943, Qutb advocated for the formation of an
10 Toth, Qutb: The Life, 16; Siddiqui, ‘About the Author’, vii.
11 Calvert, Origins of Radical Islamism, 11.
12 Ibid., 77.
13 Toth, Qutb: The Life, 31
14 Calvert, Origins of Radical Islamism, 11.
15 Ibid., 91.
16 Ibid., 11.
17 Sayyid Qutb, ‘Kifah Tiba’ (The Struggle for Thebes), al-Risala, 12, 587, 1944, 89-92 cited in Toth, Qutb: The
Life, 32.
18 Calvert, Origins of Radical Islamism, 98.
19 Toth, Qutb: The Life, 32.

4. 4
eastern bloc of Arab states in order to promote regional solidarity, enable greater Eastern influence in
world affairs and provide the “spiritual regeneration of the kind that only the east could provide” after
the perceived failure of Western civilisation in war-time.20
Thus, by the eve of World War II, Qutb had
begun to employ Islam as a symbol of the east’s authentic cultural legacy within the national, and later
pan-Arab, discourse.21
However Islam was used in this context more as a juxtaposition to western
modernity and European culture rather than an ideological position per se.22
Qutb’s perception of the East and West as divergent entities became increasingly pronounced in
the post-World War II era. During this period, a chorus of anti-imperialist rhetoric was increasingly
aimed not only at Egypt’s former colonial powers, Britain and France, but also against the United
States.23
America’s support of Zionism was seen by Qutb as evidence that “its leadership and population
lacked a transcendent moral conscience (damīr)”, a quality which he saw as necessary for “just and
responsible behavior in both the public and private spheres of human activity”.24
By 1948, Qutb’s
concern with national self-identity and cultural distinctiveness, which had long influenced his writings,
began to manifest itself within an Islamist framework.25
This can be seen in Qutb’s work ‘Social Justice
in Islam’, published in 1949, in which he called upon Egyptians to remember their “spiritual and capital
and intellectual heritage” and refrain from borrowing from other nations what they already have.26
Qutb
increasingly derived cultural pride from contrasting the virtues of Islamic culture in Egypt against the
materialist and immoral West.27
As a corollary, Qutb became increasingly morally conservative during
this period, as can be observed in his criticism of modern Egyptian cinema and music and the public
bathing scene in Alexandria.28
However it is important to note that Qutb continued to frame his criticism
of these behaviours in nationalist, rather than Islamist terms. Thus he considered popular modern music
to be “a poison running through the essence of the nation”29
and condemned co-mingling during public
20 Calvert, Origins of Radical Islamism, 100.
21 Toth, Qutb: The Life, 33.
22 Ibid.
23 Calvert, Origins of Radical Islamism, 117; Calvert, 'The World is an Undutiful Boy!', 90.
24 Calvert, 'The World is an Undutiful Boy!’, 90.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid.
28 Toth, Qutb: The Life, 39-40.
29 Sayyid Qutb, ‘al-Ghina’ al-Marid Yanghur al-Khuluq wa al-Mujtama‘a al-Misri’ (Sick Singing Strikes at
Egypt’s Nature and Society), al-Risala, 8, 374, 1940, 1382–1384 cited in Ibid., 39.

5. 5
bathing as “a violation of Egypt’s traditional modesty, brought about by people blindly imitating
European modernity”.30
Qutb’s negative perception of the West was confirmed and reinforced by his two year sojourn
in the United States between 1948 and 1949.31
As mentioned previously, certain scholars including
Emmanuel Sivan and M.M. Siddiqui regard Qutb’s trip to America as the formative experience which
led to his radicalisation. Certainly Qutb’s written accounts of particular episodes serve to underline his
view of Americans, and ipso facto the West, as morally-lax, politically repugnant, materialistic, and
alienated from its national soul. Qutb was shocked by his attempted seduction by a “drunken, semi-
naked” woman on the boat trip to the United States32
and was appalled by the “seductive atmosphere”
of a church social in Greenley, Colorado during which “[a]rms circled arms, lips met lips, chests met
chests, and the atmosphere was full of love”.33
Qutb also perceived American foreign policy to be
repugnant, both in terms of its wholesale support of the Zionist project as well as its use of the Arab
region asa pawnin its struggle for global power against the Soviet Union.34
Even American horticulture,
in the form of Greenley’s lawns, incited Qutb’s distain as they were “symptomatic of the American
preoccupation with the external, material, and selfishly individual dimensions of life.”35
Whilst his
American trip certainly deepened his antipathy of the West,it did nothing to undermine his regard from
Muslim states. Assuch,his radicalisation from reformerto revolutionary only occurreddue to exigencies
he faced after he returned home to Egypt.
The Egypt to which Qutb returned was in a state of near-collapse due to “rising prices,
unemployment, labor strikes, little investment, political assassinations, royal profligacy, government
corruption, partisan scuffles in and out of office, a massive and growing gap between rich and poor, and
a widespread, uneasy sense of disorder and chaos”.36
Qutb regarded these crises as symptomatic of
Egypt’s moral and spiritual corruption by the forces of Westernisation. As Qutb’s Islamist world view
became entrenchedhe became increasingly drawnto the faith-based activism of the Muslim Brotherhood
30 Sayyid Qutb, ‘Min Laghwi al-Sayf: Sarasir’ (From the Chitchat of Summer: Cockroaches), al-Risala, 14, 683,
1946, 858; Sayyid Qutb, ‘Min Laghwi al-Sayf: Suq al-Raqiq’ (From the Chitchat of Summer: The Slave Market),
al-Risala 14, 685, 1946, 912 cited in Toth,Qutb: The Life, 40.
31 Calvert, Origins of Radical Islamism, 13.
32 Calvert, 'The World is an Undutiful Boy!', 93.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid., 100.
35 Ibid., 96.
36 Toth, Qutb: The Life, 72.

6. 6
and finally joined the organisation following the Free Officers coup in 1953.37
Initially the Muslim
Brotherhood welcomed the change in regime however ideological cleavages swiftly became visible and
in 1954 Qutb, along with hundreds of other Brothers, was imprisoned for anti-government activities. It
is this period of imprisonment that constitutes Qutb’s ‘radicalising moment’ as it fractured his previous
world view which had imposed a clear dichotomy between the righteous East and the dissolute West.
During this period, Qutb was influenced by the notion of Islam as a “system” put forward by Pakistani
Islamist Abul Ala Mawdudi.38
This conception of Islam, coupled with the cruelty of the Nasser regime
and the brutality displayed by Qutb’s Muslim guards convinced Qutb that an Islamic reformist agenda
was futile. Instead, he embraced a revolutionary approach which called for the destruction of domestic
enemies and the establishment of an Islamic society and state.39
Qutb’s program for Islamic revival was based on three key concepts: hakimiyya,jahiliyya and
jihad.40
In his writings during this period, Qutb envisioned the establishment of an Islamic system, to be
constituted by an Islamic state ruled by the sharia andanIslamic society consisting of righteous Muslims
committed to living by Islamic standards.41
The overriding principle within this system is hakimiyya,
“the singular recognition of God’s total and absolute dominion”.42
Qutb contrasted this ideal Islamic
system with the condition of jahiliyya,a state of being which goes beyond the mere barbarism of the
pre-Islamic “Age of Ignorance” and instead is a hostile and aggressive attitude towards the monotheistic
belief of Islam".43
This conception of jahiliyya isin keeping with the definition put forwardby Mawdudi,
who regards it as "every such conduct which goes against Islamic culture, morality and the Islamic way
of thinking and behaving". However in contrast to Mawdudi, who saw the Muslim world as traditionally
being made up of both jahiliyya and Islam,44
Qutb insisted upon a strict dichotomy between jahiliyya
and Islam as: “There is no Islam in a land where Islam does not govern.... [B]esides faith there is only
unbelief (kufr); apart from Islam there is only jahiliyya; other than truth there is only error."45
37 Calvert, 'The World is an Undutiful Boy!', 94; Calvert, Origins of Radical Islamism, 14.
38 Shepard, ‘The Development of the Thought ofSayyid Quṭb’, 196-236, 217.
39 Toth, Qutb: The Life, 81, 124.
40 Ibid., 123.
41 Ibid., 124.
42 Ibid.
43 Shepard, ‘Sayyid Qutb’s Doctrine of Jahiliyya’, 522.
44 Shepard, ‘Sayyid Qutb’s Doctrine of Jahiliyya’, 523.
45 Ibid., 525.

7. 7
Qutb argued that no nation on earth could be considered a pure Islamic state, including those
which proclaim themselves to be “Muslim”, due to the corrupting influences of westernisation.46
According to Qutb, state leaderswho promoted a secularform of governance had usurped the preeminent
role of Allah in society and, as such, had plunged the society into a state of ignorance and barbarism.47
He further claimed that a state could only emerge from its condition of jahiliyya through the work of a
small vanguard who would restore hakimiyya.48
This would require waging a “struggle by word of
mouth, by propagation, by exposition, by refuting the false and baseless with a statement of truth
proclaimed by Islam. Once the ground was prepared,the men of the vanguard should then lead others in
forcefully striking at….idolatrous tyranny”.49
Thus, Qutb rejectedany attempts atsocial or moral reform
by a Muslim living in a jahiliyya society on the basis that all of society’s ills stemmed from its failure to
acceptthe sovereignty of Allah.50
Thus, in the eyesof Qutb,only revolutionary actions against a domestic
tyrant would allow a pure Islamic state emerge. This radicalised world view thus signifies the pinnacle
of Qutb’s distrust of modernist structures as a means of defining an Islamic state and, correspondingly,
a movement away from geographic entities such as the nation-state, the East and the Arab region to an
entity that was entirely grounded on ideology.
In conclusion, an examination of the historiography regarding Qutb’s radicalisation reveals
significant scholarly debate. This essay concurs with the ‘gradual progression’ school of thought
promoted by scholars such as Adnan Musallam, William E. Shepard, John Calvert and James Toth, who
regard Qutb’s transition from secular thought to moderate and later radical Islamism was multi-factorial.
It is argued that this transition was not a smooth and determined progression, rather Qutb amended his
ideology to reflect both his personal experiences and his social, political and economic environment. It
is asserted that Qutb’s Islamist ideology was finally radicalised during his term of imprisonment under
the Nasser government. As his disenchantment with the Egyptian political elite grew, he recognised the
futility of the reformist ideals in his previous writings and began to promote a revolutionary ideology
which is reflected in his extremist vision of hakimiyya and jahiliyya.
46 Calvert, Origins of Radical Islamism, 1.
47 Ibid.
48 Toth, Qutb: The Life, 123.
49 Calvert, Origins of Radical Islamism, 2.
50 Shepard, ‘Sayyid Qutb’s Doctrine of Jahiliyya’, 531.

8. 8
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