The Godfather of Jihad
I’m not quite sure why some Brits seem so dumbfounded about the fact that some young Muslims, including educated university students, harbor a desire to wage jihad from within Great Britain. All you have to do is go to the website of “Young Muslims of the United Kingdom” and visit their articles page. Scroll down and you’ll find the topic: “Great Muslims of the Twentieth Century—Sayyid Qutb.”
Who was Sayyid Qutb? He was a major mid-century theoretician of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, executed for treason by Nasser in 1966. One of Qutb’s most influential books was Milestones, about which more in a moment. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Qaeda al-Jihad’s number two man, wrote in 2001: “Sayyid Qutb’s call for loyalty to God’s oneness and to acknowledge God’s sole authority and sovereignty was the spark that ignited the Islamic revolution against the enemies of Islam at home and abroad. The bloody chapters of this revolution continue to unfold day after day.” Qutb’s brother, Mohammad, who fled Egypt, later taught at a Saudi university where one of his students was Osama bin Laden.
The fourth chapter of Milestones is entitled “Jihaad in the Cause of God.” Here are some excerpts [bolding is mine].
A fourth aspect is that Islam provides a legal basis for the relationship of the Muslim community with other groups, as is clear from the quotation from Zad al-Mitad. This legal formulation is based on the principle that Islam—that is, submission to God—is a universal Message which the whole of mankind should accept or make peace with. No political system or material power should put hindrances in the way of preaching Islam. It should leave every individual free to accept or reject it, and if someone wants to accept it, it should not prevent him or fight against him. If someone does this, then it is the duty of Islam to fight him until either he is killed or until he declares his submission.
When writers with defeatist and apologetic mentalities write about "Jihaad in Islam," trying to remove this 'blot' from Islam, then they are mixing up two things: first, that this religion forbids the imposition of its belief by force, as is clear from the verse, "There is no compulsion in religion" (2:256), while on the other hand it tries to annihilate all those political and material powers which stand between people and Islam, which force one people to bow before another people and prevent them from accepting the sovereignty of God. These two principles have no relation to one another nor is there room to mix them. In spite of this, these defeatist-type people try to mix the two aspects and want to confine Jihaad to what today is called 'defensive war'. The Islamic Jihaad has no relationship to modern warfare, either in its causes or in the way in which it is conducted. The causes of Islamic Jihaad should be sought in the very nature of Islam and its role in the world, in its high principles, which have been given to it by God and for the implementation of which God appointed the Prophet—peace be on him—as His Messenger and declared him to be the last of all prophets and messengers.
This religion is really a universal declaration of the freedom of man from servitude to other men [i.e., manmade laws, aka democracy and republicanism] and from servitude to his own desires, which is also a form of human servitude; it is a declaration that sovereignty belongs to God alone and that He is the Lord of all the worlds. It means a challenge to all kinds and forms of systems which are based on the concept of the sovereignty of man; in other words, where man has usurped the Divine attribute.
Any system in which the final decisions are referred to human beings, and in which the sources of all authority are human, deifies human beings by designating others than God as lords over men. This declaration means that the usurped authority of God be returned to Him and the usurpers be thrown out-those who by themselves devise laws for others to follow, thus elevating themselves to the status of lords and reducing others to the status of slaves. In short, to proclaim the authority and sovereignty of God means to eliminate all human kingship and to announce the rule of the Sustainer of the universe over the entire earth. In the words of the Qur'an:
"He alone is God in the heavens and in the earth." (43:84)
"The command belongs to God alone. He commands you not to worship anyone except Him. This is the right way of life." (12: 40)
"Say: O People of the Book, come to what is common between us: that we will not worship anyone except God, and will not associate anything with Him, and will not take lords from among ourselves besides God; and if they turn away then tell them to bear witness that we are those who have submitted to God." (2: 64)
The way to establish God’s rule on earth is not that some consecrated people—the priests—be given the authority to rule, as was the case with the rule of the Church, nor that some spokesmen of God become rulers, as is the case in a 'theocracy'. To establish God’s rule means that His laws be enforced and that the final decision in all affairs be according to these laws.
The establishing of the dominion of God on earth, the abolishing of the dominion of man, the taking away of sovereignty from the usurper to revert it to God, and the bringing about of the enforcement of the Divine Law (Shari’ah) and the abolition of man-made laws cannot be achieved only through preaching. Those who have usurped the authority of God and are oppressing God’s creatures are not going to give up their power merely through preaching; if it had been so, the task of establishing God's religion in the world would have been very easy for the Prophets of God! This is contrary to the evidence from the history of the Prophets and the story of the struggle of the true religion, spread over generations.
The “Young Muslims of the United Kingdom” clearly consider Qutb, often dubbed “The Godfather of the Jihadists,” a “Great Muslim of the Twentieth Century.” In fact, he is the only person so ranked under the topic. So why should anyone be surprised that some Muslim students are willing to do whatever it takes to destroy a form of government that stands in the way of the application of Shari’ah in the UK? Why should anyone be surprised that some Muslim students do not accept the fundamental principles upon which British constitutional government is based? Qutb instructs them to challenge “all kinds and forms of systems which are based on the concept of the sovereignty of man.” The concept that sovereignty rests with the people is, of course, the fundamental ideal of Enlightenment—western—political philosophy. We need to understand that some Muslims reject this ideal and intend to destroy that system, by force if necessary.
