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Jahiliyyah vs. freedom
This exposure to abuse of power undoubtedly contributed to the ideas in his famous prison-written Islamic manifesto Ma'alim fi-l-Tariq (Milestones), where he advocated a political system the opposite of dictatorship. There Qutb argued:
* The Muslim world had ceased to be and reverted to pre-Islamic ignorance known as jahiliyyah, because of the lack of sharia law. Consequently all states of the Muslim world are not Islamic and thus illegitimate, including that of his native land Egypt.
* Rather than rule by a pious few, (or democratic representation [30]), Muslims should resist any system where men are in "servitude to other men" -- i.e. obey other men -- as un-Islamic and a violation of God's sovereignty (Hakamiyya) over all of creation. A truly Islamic polity would have no rulers - not even have theocratic ones - since Muslims would need neither judges nor police to obey divine law. [31] [32] It was what one observer has called "a kind of anarcho-Islam."[33]
* The way to bring about this freedom was for a revolutionary vanguard [34] to fight jahiliyyah with a twofold approach: preaching, and abolishing the organizations and authorities of the Jahili system by "physical power and Jihaad."
The vanguard movement would grow until it formed a truly Islamic community, then spread throughout the Islamic homeland and finally throughout the entire world. Islamically-correct Jihaad now being interpreted by Qutb as offensive, no longer "narrowly" defensive as those "defeated by the attacks of the treacherous Orientalists!" believe. [35]
Qutb emphasized this struggle would be anything but easy. True Islam would transform every aspect of society, eliminating everything non-Muslim. True Muslims could look forward to lives of "poverty, difficulty, frustration, torment and sacrifice." Jahili erzatz-Muslims, Jews and Westerners would all fight and conspire against Islam and the elimination of jahiliyyah.
Sayyid Qutb - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia