Sayyid Qutb and the Crisis of Culture in Late 1940s Egypt

Sabaseviciute, Giedre

doi:10.1017/s0020743817000952

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…17 Moreover, Qutb attended the collective's weekly meetings, where he struck up friendships, exchanged books, and conceived common projects. 18 During the following years, the circle transited, with slight changes in membership, to other sites of intellectual practice, such as the short-lived periodicals The Arab World , The New Thought, and the Journal of the Muslim Brotherhood , edited by Qutb in 1947Qutb in , 1948Qutb in , and 1954 Writing about The New Thought three years after its publication, Qutb referred to it as a "battalion" (katiba) which had been struggling to establish a "clean society" in Egypt, emphasizing its cohesive commitment to this common goal (Sabaseviciute 2018). There is little doubt that the collective, which was structured around Qutb from 1945 to his imprisonment in 1954 following the crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, acted as a tightly-knit group based on friendships, gestures of solidarity in the press, and strategies of mutual promotion.…”

Section: Moment Two: Sayyid Qutb and The Battle Of Juniors And Seniors In 1947: From Mentors To Peersmentioning

confidence: 99%

When a Coterie Becomes a Generation: Intellectual Sociability and the Narrative of Generational Change in Sayyid Qutb’s Egypt

Sabaseviciute

2021

Methodological Approaches to Societies in Transformation

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Departing from the case study of Egyptian intellectuals, focusing particularly on Sayyid Qutb, this chapter explores the relationship between narratives of generational change and cultural renewal. It argues that the observation of intellectual sociability is a productive angle from which to understand the conditions under which generational claims result in the effective reshuffling of the intellectual leadership, aesthetic norms, and principles of intellectual authority. The biography of Qutb (1906–1966), a poet and literary critic who abandoned his literary activity in the mid-1950s to pursue a career in Islamic activism—allows us to observe how the generational narrative articulates with his shifting intellectual networks. As a public intellectual, Qutb was at the forefront of two literary confrontations in early- to mid-twentieth century Egypt in which he made generational claims in order to place himself in the literary tradition that emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century, and later to cut himself off from that tradition by announcing the emergence of a new generation dedicated to political Islam. At the core of these competing uses of generational rhetoric, this chapter argues, is Qutb’s shifting relationship with the senior literary generation, some of whom he had considered his mentors. Departing from the case study, the chapter then argues that collectives defined as generational tend to emerge in tandem with the reshuffling of social bonds that a writer maintains with his seniors, switching from a bond of transmission to one of confrontation. The change announced in the generational narrative is effective when followed by the concrete action of shifting one’s intellectual solidarities from masters to peers, as this is the moment when the masters are abandoned to history and peers are promoted as the new literary generation. Depending on the particular set of relationships in which a writer finds himself, the notion of generation may act as a narrative of either change or tradition.

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Section: Moment Two: Sayyid Qutb and The Battle Of Juniors And Seniors In 1947: From Mentors To Peersmentioning

confidence: 99%

When a Coterie Becomes a Generation: Intellectual Sociability and the Narrative of Generational Change in Sayyid Qutb’s Egypt

Sabaseviciute

2021

Methodological Approaches to Societies in Transformation

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“…Yet, his pluralism actually manifests a dramatic optimism about the capacity of Islam to convince without coercion. It is also worth noting that the September 11 attacks occurred shortly after Gülen moved to the United States, and so his new focus on pluralism and defense of Islam as a religion of peace can also be understood as a response to an attack on American soil from within America (Sevindi 2008, 51–77). Both Qutb and Gülen ultimately envision a Muslim society in which there is very little space for radically different conceptions of the good life: the difference is that Gülen wants to get there through spiritual renewal, and Qutb wants to get there through the state.…”

Section: What Is Education Towards?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The boundaries of pragmatism in Muslim education: Comparing the Islamic pedagogies of Sayyid Qutb and Fethullah Gülen

Guhin

2020

Critical Research on Religion

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Sayyid Qutb and Fethullah Gülen are two of the most important Muslim leaders and intellectuals of the twentieth century: the two are similar not only for their focus on the relationship between Islam and politics, but also for their lifelong commitments to education. For both Qutb and Gülen, schools were a means through which society itself could be made more just and, ultimately, more Islamic, and for both, their philosophy of education and broader political projects were at once pragmatic and implicitly (for Gülen) and explicitly for Qutb contrasted with American pragmatism. Their differing pedagogies are illustrative of their larger visions: for Qutb, Muslim education must be a “total world” in which Islam is protected from secular contagion, while for Gülen, Muslim education can move more slowly through largely secular means. For Gülen, Islam can work outside of and within a secular system; for Qutb, the system must be changed.

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The Idea of Islamic Media: The Qur'an and the Decolonization of Mass Communication

Moll

2020

Int. J. Middle East Stud.

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The emergence of Islamic television in the Arab Middle East is usually explained as part of a Saudi media empire fueled by neoliberal petro-dollars. This article, by contrast, takes seriously the role ideas played alongside changing political economies in the origins of the world’s first Islamic television channel, Iqraa. Focusing on the intellectual and institutional career of “Islamic media” (al-i’lām al-Islāmī) as a category from the late sixties onwards in Egypt, I argue that Islamic television is part of a broader decolonization struggle involving the modern discipline of mass communication. Pioneering Arab communication scholars mounted a quest for epistemic emancipation in which the question of how to mediate Islam became inextricable from the question of what made media Islamic. Drawing on historical and ethnographic research, I show how the idea of Islamic media involved a radical reconceptualization of the Qur'an as mass communication from God and of Islam as a mediatic religion. This positing of an intimate affinity between Islam and media provoked secular skepticism and religious criticism that continue to this day. I conclude by reflecting on how the intellectual history of Islamic media challenges dominant framings of epistemological decolonization as a question of interrogating oppressive universalisms in favor of liberatory pluralisms.

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Sayyid Qutb and the Crisis of Culture in Late 1940s Egypt

Cited by 5 publications

References 12 publications

When a Coterie Becomes a Generation: Intellectual Sociability and the Narrative of Generational Change in Sayyid Qutb’s Egypt

When a Coterie Becomes a Generation: Intellectual Sociability and the Narrative of Generational Change in Sayyid Qutb’s Egypt

The boundaries of pragmatism in Muslim education: Comparing the Islamic pedagogies of Sayyid Qutb and Fethullah Gülen

The Idea of Islamic Media: The Qur'an and the Decolonization of Mass Communication

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