Muhammad Qutb facts for kids

Muhammad Ibrahim Husayn Shadhili Qutb (26 April 1919 – 4 April 2014) was an Islamic scholar and the younger brother of the Egyptian revolutionary Sayyid Qutb. After his brother was executed by the Egyptian government, Muhammad moved to Saudi Arabia, where he promoted his brother's ideas.

Background

Muhammad Qutb was the second oldest of five children born in the Upper Egyptian village of Musha near Asyut, 13 years younger than his elder brother, Sayyid. When his father died in 1933, his mother moved with her children to live in Helwan near Cairo.

He studied English literature at the Cairo University, graduating in 1940, and later obtained diplomas in psychology and education.

He was arrested a few days before Sayyid (on July 29, 1965) for his alleged co-leadership along with his brother in a plot to kill leading political and cultural figures in Egypt and overthrow the government. His brother was hanged in 1966, but Muhammad's life was spared and he, along with other members of the Muslim Brotherhood took refuge in Saudi Arabia.

While there, he edited and published Sayyid's books and taught as a professor of Islamic Studies at (according to different sources) either Mecca's Umm al-Qura University, and/or King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, and that either Osama bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahiri (al Qaeda's #2 and leading theorist), was a student. Osama bin Laden recommended "Sheikh Muhammad Qutb's" book, "Concepts that Should be Corrected in a 2004 videotape. According to Lawrence Wright, who interviewed Muhammad Qutb and a close friend in college of bin Laden's, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, bin Laden "usually attended" Muhammad Qutb's weekly public lectures at King Abdul-Aziz University.

In addition to making available his brother's work, he worked to advance his ideas by "smoothing away" differences between his brother's radical supporters and more conservative Muslims, particularly other members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Muhammad took a less-literal interpretation of his brother's famous statement that the Muslim world and Muslim governments were jahiliyya (returned to pagan ignorance, and thus no longer Muslim). He denied that the country that had given him refuge (Saudi Arabia) was jahiliyya and in 1975 came out publicly against takfir, or judging Muslims as unbelievers. He also worked to reconcile the doctrine of the Muslims Brothers with "the salafism that prevailed in his host country".

In 1986, Safar Al-Hawali defended his dissertation under Qutb's supervision. "His defense was so impressive" that Qutb "declared in public that the student had surpassed his teacher". Al-Hawali went on to become one of the "two main figures of the sahwa" (Islamist awakening), which "mingled radical Wahhabism with Sayyid Qutb's ideas".

Muhammad was an author in his own right and his writings are widespread in the Arab world and nearly as prolific as his brother's. Jahiliyya in the Twentieth Century is perhaps his best-known work, and gained notoriety as an alleged terrorist handbook (along with his brother's Milestones) when the government claimed to find the two in police searches of plotters' homes and environs.

Another very popular work, Islam: the Misunderstood Religion, expands on his brother's ideas.

Qutb died at a hospital in Mecca on 4 April 2014 at the age of 94.

Influence

His teaching has been influential on 20th-century Muslim thought, particularly in Saudi Arabia following his move there in 1972. In addition to his teaching position at the Umm al-Qura University and the King Abdulaziz University Qutb also held private teaching circles and disseminated his lectures by means of cassettes, printed pamphlets and, from the late 1990s onwards, the internet. This helped to spread his popularity beyond university students. One of Qutb’s most famous students was Safar al-Hawali, whose thesis on murji’ism and secularization draws heavily on Qutb’s own teaching on the subject. Qutb also played an important role in the Sahwa movement, the adherents of which often quote his writings. In addition, Muhammad Qutb’s editorial rights over the works of his late brother, Sayyid Qutb, enabled him to select which of Sayyid Qutb’s works were published and to censor aspects that he regarded as incompatible with Sayyid Qutb’s religious thought.

Books

He wrote 36 books, including:

Essays

• Shubuhāt Hawla al-Islām (literally "Misconceptions about Islam") (Islam: The Misunderstood Religion) ISBN: 0-686-18500-5
• Islam: the Misunderstood Religion, Markazi Maktabi Islami, Delhi-6, 5th edition (English translation)
• Dirāsāt fī al-nafs al-insānīyah.[1963?] (Studies in human psychology) BP166.73 .Q8 Arab
• Hal nahnu Muslimūn (Are we Muslims?) al-Qāhirah : Dār al-Shurūq, 1980, ISBN: 977-705-981-7
• al-Insān bayna al-māddīyah wa-al-Islām. (Man between the Material World and Islam) B825 .Q8 (Orien Arab)
• al-Sahwah al-Islāmīyah (The Islamic Resurgence)(al-Qāhirah : Maktabat al-Sunnah, 1990)
• Jahiliyat al-qarn al-`ishrin (Jahiliyya of the Twentieth Century), 292 p.; 23 cm. al-Qahirah : Dar al-Shuruq, ; ISBN: 977-733-606-3
• The Concept of Islam and Our Understanding of It
• The Future is for Islam
• Islam and the Crisis of the Modern World 28 p.; published by The Islamic Foundation, 1979. ISBN: 0-86037-047-X
• Waqena Al -moaser, 527 p.; published by Dār al-Shurūq, 1979. ISBN: 977-09-0393-0
• Qabasāt min al-Rasūl
• Riḥlah ilá al-Ḥijāz
• al-Taṭawwur wa-al-thabāt fī ḥayāt al-bashrīyah, on religion and science
• Maḥmūd al-Badawī : ʻāshiq al-qiṣṣah al-qaṣīrah, biographical work on Egyptian writer Mahmud al-Badawi
• al-Fann wa-al-basāṭah : qirāʼah fi al-qiṣṣah al-qaṣīrah ʻinda Tharwat Abāẓah, study of the works of Egyptian writer Tharwat Abaza
• Muḥammad Jubrīl wa-ʻālamuhu al-qaṣaṣī, study of the works of Egyptian writer Muhammad Jibril
• al-Ruʼá wa-al-aḥlām : qirāʼah fī nuṣūṣ riwāʼīyah, literary criticism on Arab novel
• al-Sard fī muwājahat al-wāqiʻ : fuṣūl min al-qiṣ̣ṣah al-Suʻūdīyah, literary criticism on Saudi literature

Novels

• al-Sayyid alladhī raḥal
• al-Khurūj ilá al-nabʻ
• al-Ṭaraf al-ākhar min al-bayt

Short stories

• al-Banāt wa-al-qamar
• Ṣadaʼ al-qulūb

Poetry

• Daftar al-alwān