Science in Sayyid Quṭb’s ‘Milestones’
Sayyid Quṭb was an Egyptian fundamentalist writer of the Muslim Brotherhood circle, active since the late 40s till 1966, when he was executed for plotting against the rule of Ğamāl ʽAbd an-Nāṣir. He was a source of inspiration for many and therefore, while his words come from a half of a century ago, they continue to be important and influential in some societies of the Muslim World.
The vast domination of western science over that of the Muslim World resulted in economical and political domination as well, which in turn made western culture more appealing to Muslims, with all its consequences. All this needed a reply from the Muslim community, and the matter of science became one of central problems for it. In general, the major Muslim thinkers, such as Al-Afḡānī and ʽAbduh were in favor of science, they defended science against obscurantist attacks coming from some of their coreligionists just as usually they defended Islam against a claim that scientific backwardness of the Islamic world was due to Islam, and wanted to transplant western science to the Islamic world to make it stronger and able to defend itself against the West.
When it comes to Quṭb, he does praise science and its results. He claims that islam does no prohibit material progress ; that the Muslim community must “preserve and develop the material fruits of creative genius of Europe” . He praises “wonderful works of science, culture, law and material production – a progress to high levels of creativity and comfort” , “the wonderful material comfort and great inventions” , he claims that material progress should not be neglected, that it is a duty of Muslims , that material production is important , that human values and Islam encourage material progress and prosperity . It is worth noting, however, that he mentions science most of all as a means of achieving material comfort. Whatever can be said about Quṭb, he was a spiritual man and while material comfort may have appealed to him, I suspect that he, above all, tried to appeal to the attitudes of his readers, who aspired to the wealthy life made possible by the western discoveries. Quṭb, after all, claims that knowledge is insignificant in comparison with religion in a different part of his book . I suspect Quṭb manifests his partaking in the common attitude of respect for western achievements to attract the reader to his thoughts. It is clear when he writes “it is hard to find fault in the inventors of such magnificent works, especially since what we call >>the world of Islam<< is so devoid of beauty” , yet it doesn’t seem hard for him some pages later, where he writes for example that these “civilisations” that have amazed many and defeated their spirit, are ignorant (ḡāhilī
in spirit. They are hollow, wrong and worthless in comparison to Islam , etc. He was aware of the amazement the material success of the West inspires in Muslims, so he started calmly praising what he found might be praised and only later criticising what he found had to be criticised. He was not as naïve as f. e. a polish politician H. Goryszewski, who once outrightly claimed that “it’s not important whether Poland is wealthy or not, as long as it’s catholic”. He was wiser than that. But while the rhetoric value of the praises he showered the science and material progress with is clear, he was able to give a theoretical fundament and explanation of it, by claiming it is a fulfillment of a divinely ordained duty of man – God’s representative on Earth.
As I’ve mentioned, despite his earlier words, Quṭb criticised the West thoroughly. What he criticised the most is that the West is consumed by materialism. He didn’t find a big difference in this matter between the communist and the capitalist blocks, because while the communists valued materialism the most as a theory, Europe and USA valued it the most in the form of material production . One may link that claim of Qutb with another statement of his, in which he criticised Darwinist biology by saying that non-Muslim scientists were fooled by presence of common features between humans and animals to the point that they’ve counted humans among the animals . Both are obviously wrong according to Sayyid Qutb. As he reminded us, human beings have other features as well, and even non-Muslim scientists had to accept that. So while material progress is necessary and prescribed by God, one should not neglect the human values. Having lost the human values, the West is not able, according to Qutb, to lead the humanity forward anymore . Qutb also claimed that only Islam possesses the values , so one could ask himself whether the West ever had them at all. But I refer to his another statement in which he claimed that Islam has them to the highest extent .
Another sign that the superiority of the West is falling is the failure of its ideologies, such as nationalism and communism. The proof of the end of communism, which Qutb deemed alien to human nature, was the failure of its economic system and that there’s no country which would be fully Marxist . Which is interesting, as Qutb also claimed there’s no fully Muslim country, society etc and yet that was not a proof of Islam’s failure. Secondly, the proof of barrenness of western democracy was that it’s borrowing from communist economical system . That’s yet another inconsistency in Qutb’s claims, Marxism – even in his own opinion – wasn’t as dead as he claimed. Qutb, however, had to describe communism as fallen, because it claimed to be an outcome of social studies, which he despised. As he’s claimed: “all human-made collective theories have proven to be failures” , and, therefore, the time has come for a collective theory which isn’t human made, but comes from God, that is Islam. The third sign that the leadership of mankind is slipping away from the West is that the period of resurgence of sciences, “which started in XVI century and peaked in XVIII and XIX centuries”, has fulfilled its role, and apparently is coming to an end . XX century is shown by Quṭb as already past the peak of scientific progress. One should note that Qutb wrote such words before the explosion of computer technologies and then they may have seemed less absurd than they do today. But even in Qutb’s years this must have been a very controversial statement and if he uttered it, it is because he wanted to believe the West is falling. By the end of the resurgence of science Qutb most likely ment the end of revolutionary changes of this matter, and not a complete extinguishing of the possibilities of progress, as Qutb claimed that what the West achieved must be furthered, and that the Muslim community will compete with the West in this matter and will do so after several centuries, that is after several centuries of continuous progress. The scientific progress will, therefore, be slowed down and its importance will diminish, but it will nevertheless continue. Quṭb belittled the future scientific progress, as well as claimed that it will take Muslims “a number of centuries” to catch up to the European level of scientific progress , because it enabled him to focus on more important matters. It is clear when he claimed that Muslims can’t compete in the field of material progress, so they should offer something else to the world – the human values, that is Islam. Quṭb was aware that these claims may discourage Muslims from striving in the field of science more than they should, and that’s why his next words were that “it doesn’t mean that material progress should be neglected”, and that God makes it their obligation . Then he again reaffirmed the importance of faith.
The scientific and material progress were therefore something good, obligatory even, but were not the first necessity. Once again I recall his claim that science is insignificant in comparison with faith. Qutb also claimed that the line of progress goes from the animal urges to higher values and that, therefore, it’s the civilisation that celebrates human values is the progressive and most civilised one, and not the one most successful in economy, science and industry . That actually would make the reborn Muslim community the most progressive and the most civilised from the start, as it has the human values in the highest, divine, form . But it’s nevertheless not enough today to claim the leadership of mankind, if he claims that it’s a long journey from rebirth to assuming the leadership. It appears that it’s the combination, harmonious progress in both spiritual and material fields, that makes a civilisation able to lead the mankind. And to achieve that, Muslims must progress in science. But to achieve this progress, they should know the milestones on their path. In general, Quṭb believed that Muslims should take example of the first Muslim generation and of how God guided them. God first strengthened their faith for thirteen years, in a hostile environment and without any promise but that of Heaven. Only when their faith was strong and their hearts free of any earthly ambition, he organised their life, ordered them to fight and gave them victories. It is not clearly written, but one may surmise such is also the case of scientific progress: it is the most important to build up the faith of Muslims, and only then to start solving the problems. Only with strong faith they will be able to overcome these problems. In the world Quṭb envisages, it is enough for a Muslim to hear that his religion demands something from him, and he will fulfill it, due to the strength of his faith . Therefore, if he said Islam orders Muslims to develop science, he probably believed that once they are truly believers, they will do it, because they are told so by their faith.
Qutb emphasised that there should be only one source of guidance for Muslims, that is Al-Qur’ān, and insisted that early Muslims didn’t turn to all the great and scientifically developed cultures that surrounded them – not to Romans, nor the Greek heritage, nor to Persians nor Indians and so on, for guidance, but to Al-Qur’ān solely. Later on, that is after the conquests, Muslims added other sources of guidance besides Al-Qur’ān, such as the Greek philosophy, and it was that impurity of sources that caused the loss of world leadership by Muslim community right after the start of Islam’s divine mission . It’s important to note that Qutb regarded only the first Muslim generation as truly Islamic. The Islamic community disappeared with the advent of the Umayyad dynasty, or even earlier. Therefore, what we usually consider the peak of Muslim civilisation, that is early and middle Abbasid period and the Umayyad reign in Spain, are regarded by Qutb as well into the period of decay. And if Asʽad AbuKhalil contrasts fundamentalists with “classical Islamic Scholars” it is perhaps because Sayyid Qutb does the same. The Muslim thought of these times, influenced by foreign thought, especially Greek, is apparently not Muslim at all for him, because it had sources besides Al-Qur’ān and because it turned away from simple practical approach of early Muslims, who turned for guidance to religion in every aspect of their lives and fulfilled what they were told, without doubts or asking questions. On another hand, however, he did claim them to be Islamic when he wrote that the experimental method, the guiding force of the modern European industrial culture, originated from the “universities” of Al-Andalus and the Muslim East. The idea of the importance of Muslim contribution obviously came from the West, and is true within some limits, but what’s interesting is that the earlier writers, such as Rašīd Riḍā, accepted the fact that what Muslims transmitted to the West was the ancient Greek knowledge. Quṭb didn’t. As it was mentioned, he believed that the very Greek philosophy, tainting the purity of the Muslim sources of guidance, was one of the reasons for the downfall of the Islamic community. He couldn’t therefore take pride in the transmission of the Greek heritage, yet the notion of the Western debt in the field of science apparently was too luring for him and he decided to incorporate it into his theory, replacing the Greek thought with “experimental method” . The excuse for linking this method to Islam is perhaps that Quṭb believed that reason comes from God. In any case, historical accuracy was never Quṭb’s forté: for the sake of his argument, he seems to place the first Islamic civil war and the start of the denominational fractions within Islam, the end of the conquests, as well as the end of the science within Islam somewhere around the same time (as caused by the same factor), which would be in any case long before Muslims even entered Al-Andalus. But one should not be surprised: As Bouzid mentions , everything was the result of Islam for him, from Reformation to the French Revolution.
The Europe adapted that allegedly Islamic concept of experimental method, while the Muslim world gradually grew apart from Islam, which resulted in scientific failure. The inconsistency here lies in the fact that on one hand, Quṭb presented science and experimental method as something closely linked to Islam to the point that growing apart from Islam resulted in the failure of science, and on another hand he presented Europe as an example that the experimental method can be adopted without Islam. This apparent inconsistence can be, however, partly explained by that Quṭb might have thought that Muslims abandoned the divine order to promote science together with Islam, rather than the experimental method, but that doesn’t really explain why did Muslims abandon the experimental method, and Europe did not. The ahistoricity of these claims is furthered by the claims that in fact “attacks of the Zionists”, as well as of crusaders, contributed to the fall of the Islamic science while in the late 19th and earny 20th century, when the fundaments of Zionism was established, Muslim science was already in deep crisis for several centuries.
As I’ve mentioned, according to Quṭb, the Muslim world drifted away from Islam and, in result, from science, due to the impurity of the sources of guidance they’ve adapted from the other cultures. Many of Quṭb’s remarks on science can be explained as an attempt to show how to avoid a similar pollution of Islamic knowledge in the future. Quṭb therefore divides sciences into those that are not in contradiction with Islam and those that are. He accepts abstract sciences: chemistry, physics, biology, astronomy, medicine, industry, farming, technical aspects of administration, technology, the art of war etc, as these sciences do not concern the basics concepts of Muslim life and bear no danger of distorting the faith. In fact, he claims that unless the Muslim community doesn’t have specialists in each of these fields of knowledge, it should all be deemed sinful. Moreover, he believed that the sciences concerning the rules of the Universe, such as astronomy, biology, physics, chemistry and geology, lead to God, unless they are, as is the case in Europe, influenced by personal bias . And it is most likely in order to avoid being infected with antireligious bias common in Europe, that Muslims shouldn’t, according to Quṭb, learn from non-Muslims unless there are no pious Muslim specialists available in these fields of knowledge. In fact, he says that “all scientists nowdays” are preoccupied with the material world, and God orders to stay away from such people. Another reason for that is that, as God warns Muslims, Christians and Jews have bad intentions towards them .
When it comes to social sciences and humanities, the case is different. As A. Bouzid mentions, even ʽAbduh and Al-Afḡānī were suspicious of them, but not to the point of the latest work of Quṭb, according to which the “interpretation of human strives, individual or collective”, such as theory of human nature or interpretation of history, the beginnings of the world or human life; philosophy, psychology (apart from experiments), ethics, comparative religion, sociology (apart from statistics and outright observations) should be left to God . One can make some observations, experiments, statistics, but should not try to go beyond that, to construct general rules. All of these sciences, especially Darwinist biology, are intrinsically hostile towards any religion, especially Islam. In fact, Quṭb sometimes seems to have believed that religion is under deliberate attack from these branches of science. He wrote that Darwin biology goes beyond observations, for the sole reason to give an opinion basing on an assumption that there’s no reason to assume existence of a higher force and spoke of a deliberate attempt of gradual destruction of the fundaments of the Islamic society . He believed that, due to the problems the scientists had with the allegedly oppressive church, they unnecessarily turned against every religion, but for some reason he concludes that Islam is targeted by the anti-religious bias of science to a bigger extent than another religion , even though, as he writes in his other work, it didn’t limit the sciences as much as the Church did. On another hand, in another place of his work, he simply regarded the non-Muslim scientists as misled, as in the case of considering humans animals .
In any case, Quṭb claimed it is allowed for Muslims to learn the opinion of non-Muslim authors (in these fields), to know their distortions and to correct them . Therefore, as it seems, it is fine to learn the theory of evolution etc, as long as one emphasises that it is wrong. Quṭb claimed that the “search for the truth in the one who knows” coranic verse is often used out of its context . And the use of it is unacceptable when it comes to sciences relating to faith, religion, morality, values, customs, habits and human relationships. By which Quṭb didn’t mean one should not read non-Muslim opinions in these fields, because, as I’ve mentioned, he claimed a Muslim can read them, but rather that he shouldn’t agree with them. Finally, it is strictly forbidden for a Muslim to learn his own faith, implications of his own concepts, interpretation of Al-Qur’ān and of ḥadīṯs, the philosophy of Muslim history etc. from someone else than from a pious Muslim, because, as a certain ḥadīṯ informs us, they have bad intentions towards Muslims .
Science played an unique role in Quṭb’s discourse. It is worth noting that Quṭb was very unwilling to share the details of the organization of the future Muslim community. He believed theorising is alien to Islam, and claimed that demands for details are a “mockery of Islam” . And yet, in that very case, he presents some theory and details. Therefore, it may be said that he believed the question of science is a very important problem that needs an urgent solution. But were his opinions a good solution, it’s another matter. The science under the rule imagined by Sayyid Quṭb would definitely not be “given its last blow”, as some would believe. If one believes Quṭb, it would be in fact encouraged, but only within certain limits and only when it comes to selected spheres of knowledge. Is it at all possible to develop certain sciences while completely denying the right of existence to another ones, I don’t know. Also, as I’ve mentioned, while Qutb tried to explain why Europe progressed so much in science, and the Muslim World stagnated, he failed at it, in my opinion. Many claim that’s because there’s a tie between the western post-Enlightment culture and the scientific progress, and, as A. Bouzid mentions, Quṭb himself was seeing it in his earlier works . In Milestones, he changed his mind. Also, despite that he seems to have believed in continuous development of science, his demand that once there are Muslim specialists in a field Muslims should not learn from non-Muslims appears to deny it and would limit the spread of new discoveries. It is, however, in agreement with his aforementioned belief that the biggest scientific discoveries are already behind us. Finally, Quṭb believed, perhaps overly, in the strength of faith. He mocked the secular powers claiming that in Islam, it’s enough to say an order and it will be fulfilled. Apparently, he also believed that it’s enough to tell Muslims to propagate science, and they will. While the strength of faith is undeniable, I’m not sure if it is that great.
(unfortunatelly, I can not easily paste the notes, in which I also give some mentions of what he's writing in some of his other works etc. But nevermind. Above all, I want to get rid of the linguistic mistakes in the main text.
Sayyid Quṭb was an Egyptian fundamentalist writer of the Muslim Brotherhood circle, active since the late 40s till 1966, when he was executed for plotting against the rule of Ğamāl ʽAbd an-Nāṣir. He was a source of inspiration for many and therefore, while his words come from a half of a century ago, they continue to be important and influential in some societies of the Muslim World.
The vast domination of western science over that of the Muslim World resulted in economical and political domination as well, which in turn made western culture more appealing to Muslims, with all its consequences. All this needed a reply from the Muslim community, and the matter of science became one of central problems for it. In general, the major Muslim thinkers, such as Al-Afḡānī and ʽAbduh were in favor of science, they defended science against obscurantist attacks coming from some of their coreligionists just as usually they defended Islam against a claim that scientific backwardness of the Islamic world was due to Islam, and wanted to transplant western science to the Islamic world to make it stronger and able to defend itself against the West.
When it comes to Quṭb, he does praise science and its results. He claims that islam does no prohibit material progress ; that the Muslim community must “preserve and develop the material fruits of creative genius of Europe” . He praises “wonderful works of science, culture, law and material production – a progress to high levels of creativity and comfort” , “the wonderful material comfort and great inventions” , he claims that material progress should not be neglected, that it is a duty of Muslims , that material production is important , that human values and Islam encourage material progress and prosperity . It is worth noting, however, that he mentions science most of all as a means of achieving material comfort. Whatever can be said about Quṭb, he was a spiritual man and while material comfort may have appealed to him, I suspect that he, above all, tried to appeal to the attitudes of his readers, who aspired to the wealthy life made possible by the western discoveries. Quṭb, after all, claims that knowledge is insignificant in comparison with religion in a different part of his book . I suspect Quṭb manifests his partaking in the common attitude of respect for western achievements to attract the reader to his thoughts. It is clear when he writes “it is hard to find fault in the inventors of such magnificent works, especially since what we call >>the world of Islam<< is so devoid of beauty” , yet it doesn’t seem hard for him some pages later, where he writes for example that these “civilisations” that have amazed many and defeated their spirit, are ignorant (ḡāhilī
in spirit. They are hollow, wrong and worthless in comparison to Islam , etc. He was aware of the amazement the material success of the West inspires in Muslims, so he started calmly praising what he found might be praised and only later criticising what he found had to be criticised. He was not as naïve as f. e. a polish politician H. Goryszewski, who once outrightly claimed that “it’s not important whether Poland is wealthy or not, as long as it’s catholic”. He was wiser than that. But while the rhetoric value of the praises he showered the science and material progress with is clear, he was able to give a theoretical fundament and explanation of it, by claiming it is a fulfillment of a divinely ordained duty of man – God’s representative on Earth.As I’ve mentioned, despite his earlier words, Quṭb criticised the West thoroughly. What he criticised the most is that the West is consumed by materialism. He didn’t find a big difference in this matter between the communist and the capitalist blocks, because while the communists valued materialism the most as a theory, Europe and USA valued it the most in the form of material production . One may link that claim of Qutb with another statement of his, in which he criticised Darwinist biology by saying that non-Muslim scientists were fooled by presence of common features between humans and animals to the point that they’ve counted humans among the animals . Both are obviously wrong according to Sayyid Qutb. As he reminded us, human beings have other features as well, and even non-Muslim scientists had to accept that. So while material progress is necessary and prescribed by God, one should not neglect the human values. Having lost the human values, the West is not able, according to Qutb, to lead the humanity forward anymore . Qutb also claimed that only Islam possesses the values , so one could ask himself whether the West ever had them at all. But I refer to his another statement in which he claimed that Islam has them to the highest extent .
Another sign that the superiority of the West is falling is the failure of its ideologies, such as nationalism and communism. The proof of the end of communism, which Qutb deemed alien to human nature, was the failure of its economic system and that there’s no country which would be fully Marxist . Which is interesting, as Qutb also claimed there’s no fully Muslim country, society etc and yet that was not a proof of Islam’s failure. Secondly, the proof of barrenness of western democracy was that it’s borrowing from communist economical system . That’s yet another inconsistency in Qutb’s claims, Marxism – even in his own opinion – wasn’t as dead as he claimed. Qutb, however, had to describe communism as fallen, because it claimed to be an outcome of social studies, which he despised. As he’s claimed: “all human-made collective theories have proven to be failures” , and, therefore, the time has come for a collective theory which isn’t human made, but comes from God, that is Islam. The third sign that the leadership of mankind is slipping away from the West is that the period of resurgence of sciences, “which started in XVI century and peaked in XVIII and XIX centuries”, has fulfilled its role, and apparently is coming to an end . XX century is shown by Quṭb as already past the peak of scientific progress. One should note that Qutb wrote such words before the explosion of computer technologies and then they may have seemed less absurd than they do today. But even in Qutb’s years this must have been a very controversial statement and if he uttered it, it is because he wanted to believe the West is falling. By the end of the resurgence of science Qutb most likely ment the end of revolutionary changes of this matter, and not a complete extinguishing of the possibilities of progress, as Qutb claimed that what the West achieved must be furthered, and that the Muslim community will compete with the West in this matter and will do so after several centuries, that is after several centuries of continuous progress. The scientific progress will, therefore, be slowed down and its importance will diminish, but it will nevertheless continue. Quṭb belittled the future scientific progress, as well as claimed that it will take Muslims “a number of centuries” to catch up to the European level of scientific progress , because it enabled him to focus on more important matters. It is clear when he claimed that Muslims can’t compete in the field of material progress, so they should offer something else to the world – the human values, that is Islam. Quṭb was aware that these claims may discourage Muslims from striving in the field of science more than they should, and that’s why his next words were that “it doesn’t mean that material progress should be neglected”, and that God makes it their obligation . Then he again reaffirmed the importance of faith.
The scientific and material progress were therefore something good, obligatory even, but were not the first necessity. Once again I recall his claim that science is insignificant in comparison with faith. Qutb also claimed that the line of progress goes from the animal urges to higher values and that, therefore, it’s the civilisation that celebrates human values is the progressive and most civilised one, and not the one most successful in economy, science and industry . That actually would make the reborn Muslim community the most progressive and the most civilised from the start, as it has the human values in the highest, divine, form . But it’s nevertheless not enough today to claim the leadership of mankind, if he claims that it’s a long journey from rebirth to assuming the leadership. It appears that it’s the combination, harmonious progress in both spiritual and material fields, that makes a civilisation able to lead the mankind. And to achieve that, Muslims must progress in science. But to achieve this progress, they should know the milestones on their path. In general, Quṭb believed that Muslims should take example of the first Muslim generation and of how God guided them. God first strengthened their faith for thirteen years, in a hostile environment and without any promise but that of Heaven. Only when their faith was strong and their hearts free of any earthly ambition, he organised their life, ordered them to fight and gave them victories. It is not clearly written, but one may surmise such is also the case of scientific progress: it is the most important to build up the faith of Muslims, and only then to start solving the problems. Only with strong faith they will be able to overcome these problems. In the world Quṭb envisages, it is enough for a Muslim to hear that his religion demands something from him, and he will fulfill it, due to the strength of his faith . Therefore, if he said Islam orders Muslims to develop science, he probably believed that once they are truly believers, they will do it, because they are told so by their faith.
Qutb emphasised that there should be only one source of guidance for Muslims, that is Al-Qur’ān, and insisted that early Muslims didn’t turn to all the great and scientifically developed cultures that surrounded them – not to Romans, nor the Greek heritage, nor to Persians nor Indians and so on, for guidance, but to Al-Qur’ān solely. Later on, that is after the conquests, Muslims added other sources of guidance besides Al-Qur’ān, such as the Greek philosophy, and it was that impurity of sources that caused the loss of world leadership by Muslim community right after the start of Islam’s divine mission . It’s important to note that Qutb regarded only the first Muslim generation as truly Islamic. The Islamic community disappeared with the advent of the Umayyad dynasty, or even earlier. Therefore, what we usually consider the peak of Muslim civilisation, that is early and middle Abbasid period and the Umayyad reign in Spain, are regarded by Qutb as well into the period of decay. And if Asʽad AbuKhalil contrasts fundamentalists with “classical Islamic Scholars” it is perhaps because Sayyid Qutb does the same. The Muslim thought of these times, influenced by foreign thought, especially Greek, is apparently not Muslim at all for him, because it had sources besides Al-Qur’ān and because it turned away from simple practical approach of early Muslims, who turned for guidance to religion in every aspect of their lives and fulfilled what they were told, without doubts or asking questions. On another hand, however, he did claim them to be Islamic when he wrote that the experimental method, the guiding force of the modern European industrial culture, originated from the “universities” of Al-Andalus and the Muslim East. The idea of the importance of Muslim contribution obviously came from the West, and is true within some limits, but what’s interesting is that the earlier writers, such as Rašīd Riḍā, accepted the fact that what Muslims transmitted to the West was the ancient Greek knowledge. Quṭb didn’t. As it was mentioned, he believed that the very Greek philosophy, tainting the purity of the Muslim sources of guidance, was one of the reasons for the downfall of the Islamic community. He couldn’t therefore take pride in the transmission of the Greek heritage, yet the notion of the Western debt in the field of science apparently was too luring for him and he decided to incorporate it into his theory, replacing the Greek thought with “experimental method” . The excuse for linking this method to Islam is perhaps that Quṭb believed that reason comes from God. In any case, historical accuracy was never Quṭb’s forté: for the sake of his argument, he seems to place the first Islamic civil war and the start of the denominational fractions within Islam, the end of the conquests, as well as the end of the science within Islam somewhere around the same time (as caused by the same factor), which would be in any case long before Muslims even entered Al-Andalus. But one should not be surprised: As Bouzid mentions , everything was the result of Islam for him, from Reformation to the French Revolution.
The Europe adapted that allegedly Islamic concept of experimental method, while the Muslim world gradually grew apart from Islam, which resulted in scientific failure. The inconsistency here lies in the fact that on one hand, Quṭb presented science and experimental method as something closely linked to Islam to the point that growing apart from Islam resulted in the failure of science, and on another hand he presented Europe as an example that the experimental method can be adopted without Islam. This apparent inconsistence can be, however, partly explained by that Quṭb might have thought that Muslims abandoned the divine order to promote science together with Islam, rather than the experimental method, but that doesn’t really explain why did Muslims abandon the experimental method, and Europe did not. The ahistoricity of these claims is furthered by the claims that in fact “attacks of the Zionists”, as well as of crusaders, contributed to the fall of the Islamic science while in the late 19th and earny 20th century, when the fundaments of Zionism was established, Muslim science was already in deep crisis for several centuries.
As I’ve mentioned, according to Quṭb, the Muslim world drifted away from Islam and, in result, from science, due to the impurity of the sources of guidance they’ve adapted from the other cultures. Many of Quṭb’s remarks on science can be explained as an attempt to show how to avoid a similar pollution of Islamic knowledge in the future. Quṭb therefore divides sciences into those that are not in contradiction with Islam and those that are. He accepts abstract sciences: chemistry, physics, biology, astronomy, medicine, industry, farming, technical aspects of administration, technology, the art of war etc, as these sciences do not concern the basics concepts of Muslim life and bear no danger of distorting the faith. In fact, he claims that unless the Muslim community doesn’t have specialists in each of these fields of knowledge, it should all be deemed sinful. Moreover, he believed that the sciences concerning the rules of the Universe, such as astronomy, biology, physics, chemistry and geology, lead to God, unless they are, as is the case in Europe, influenced by personal bias . And it is most likely in order to avoid being infected with antireligious bias common in Europe, that Muslims shouldn’t, according to Quṭb, learn from non-Muslims unless there are no pious Muslim specialists available in these fields of knowledge. In fact, he says that “all scientists nowdays” are preoccupied with the material world, and God orders to stay away from such people. Another reason for that is that, as God warns Muslims, Christians and Jews have bad intentions towards them .
When it comes to social sciences and humanities, the case is different. As A. Bouzid mentions, even ʽAbduh and Al-Afḡānī were suspicious of them, but not to the point of the latest work of Quṭb, according to which the “interpretation of human strives, individual or collective”, such as theory of human nature or interpretation of history, the beginnings of the world or human life; philosophy, psychology (apart from experiments), ethics, comparative religion, sociology (apart from statistics and outright observations) should be left to God . One can make some observations, experiments, statistics, but should not try to go beyond that, to construct general rules. All of these sciences, especially Darwinist biology, are intrinsically hostile towards any religion, especially Islam. In fact, Quṭb sometimes seems to have believed that religion is under deliberate attack from these branches of science. He wrote that Darwin biology goes beyond observations, for the sole reason to give an opinion basing on an assumption that there’s no reason to assume existence of a higher force and spoke of a deliberate attempt of gradual destruction of the fundaments of the Islamic society . He believed that, due to the problems the scientists had with the allegedly oppressive church, they unnecessarily turned against every religion, but for some reason he concludes that Islam is targeted by the anti-religious bias of science to a bigger extent than another religion , even though, as he writes in his other work, it didn’t limit the sciences as much as the Church did. On another hand, in another place of his work, he simply regarded the non-Muslim scientists as misled, as in the case of considering humans animals .
In any case, Quṭb claimed it is allowed for Muslims to learn the opinion of non-Muslim authors (in these fields), to know their distortions and to correct them . Therefore, as it seems, it is fine to learn the theory of evolution etc, as long as one emphasises that it is wrong. Quṭb claimed that the “search for the truth in the one who knows” coranic verse is often used out of its context . And the use of it is unacceptable when it comes to sciences relating to faith, religion, morality, values, customs, habits and human relationships. By which Quṭb didn’t mean one should not read non-Muslim opinions in these fields, because, as I’ve mentioned, he claimed a Muslim can read them, but rather that he shouldn’t agree with them. Finally, it is strictly forbidden for a Muslim to learn his own faith, implications of his own concepts, interpretation of Al-Qur’ān and of ḥadīṯs, the philosophy of Muslim history etc. from someone else than from a pious Muslim, because, as a certain ḥadīṯ informs us, they have bad intentions towards Muslims .
Science played an unique role in Quṭb’s discourse. It is worth noting that Quṭb was very unwilling to share the details of the organization of the future Muslim community. He believed theorising is alien to Islam, and claimed that demands for details are a “mockery of Islam” . And yet, in that very case, he presents some theory and details. Therefore, it may be said that he believed the question of science is a very important problem that needs an urgent solution. But were his opinions a good solution, it’s another matter. The science under the rule imagined by Sayyid Quṭb would definitely not be “given its last blow”, as some would believe. If one believes Quṭb, it would be in fact encouraged, but only within certain limits and only when it comes to selected spheres of knowledge. Is it at all possible to develop certain sciences while completely denying the right of existence to another ones, I don’t know. Also, as I’ve mentioned, while Qutb tried to explain why Europe progressed so much in science, and the Muslim World stagnated, he failed at it, in my opinion. Many claim that’s because there’s a tie between the western post-Enlightment culture and the scientific progress, and, as A. Bouzid mentions, Quṭb himself was seeing it in his earlier works . In Milestones, he changed his mind. Also, despite that he seems to have believed in continuous development of science, his demand that once there are Muslim specialists in a field Muslims should not learn from non-Muslims appears to deny it and would limit the spread of new discoveries. It is, however, in agreement with his aforementioned belief that the biggest scientific discoveries are already behind us. Finally, Quṭb believed, perhaps overly, in the strength of faith. He mocked the secular powers claiming that in Islam, it’s enough to say an order and it will be fulfilled. Apparently, he also believed that it’s enough to tell Muslims to propagate science, and they will. While the strength of faith is undeniable, I’m not sure if it is that great.
(unfortunatelly, I can not easily paste the notes, in which I also give some mentions of what he's writing in some of his other works etc. But nevermind. Above all, I want to get rid of the linguistic mistakes in the main text.
