From Qutb And The Brotherhood To Isis And The Caliphate; A Self-defeating Ideology?

The offensive conducted by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) in 2014 indicated that for perhaps the first time since its inception, the Westphalian state system was being explicitly challenged. It demonstrated a clear rejection of the old order, building what ISIS promised to be a utopian world defined and shaped by the framework of the Sharia. This ideology has been nurtured by the ideas of key Islamic fundamentalists. One of these influencers was Sayyid Qutb, labelled by Zimmerman as the & intellectual godfather for the various modern radical Islamic movements (2004:222). This essay will consider the ideas of Qutb in detail, focussing particularly on the approach he recommends in regard to the founding of an Islamic state. Following a detailed study of Qutb s ideas, the case of ISIS will be analysed. The objectives of ISIS must be examined before it is possible to see if the Qutbian approach they have taken can be considered a success or as self defeating . Whilst ISIS will probably be defeated on the battlefield, ideas do not die so easily& it is likely that another manifestation of ISIS will appear in the future, if not in the same region, but wherever the structural conditions allow. Therefore particular attention will be paid to the ideology of Qutb in this essay, because if his approach really is self defeating this will have enormous implications for the future of the Islamic jihadist movement. If his approach is not self defeating then the implications are arguably even larger.

Qutb identified that there was (1) a goal to be realized, (2) obstacles to be overcome, and (3) a means to overcome these obstacles and realize that goal. (Bergesen, 2008:14). Firstly, the goal to be realised: Qutb dreamed of a society whereby Islam and the state were a single entity. He claimed that Islam is unique in its ability to base a society purely on religious thought. In Milestones, he states that Only Islam has the distinction of basing the fundamental binding relationship in its society on belief (2005:65). There is no separation of Mosque and state- Bergesen notes that this is distinctly different to the Christians where in Mark 12:17 Jesus instructs to give to Caesar the things that are Caesar s and give to God the things that are God s (1987:NVC), referring to the paying of taxes to the Romans. The Christians should continue to live under the current system and should not try to overthrow it, something of which Qutb was deeply critical (Zimmerman, 2004:231). Bergesen states that in Islam, nothing is left to Caesar. God is about economics, government, law and politics. (2008:23). Qutb glorified the first Islamic generations, and believes that their way of life demonstrated the benefits that the Sharia brought. As Soage states Qutb explained that Muslims should imitate the first generation of believers . (2009:300). This is therefore Qutb s goal to be realised& a state which is synonymous with the creed of Islam, predicated entirely upon the Sharia law system, whereby the the ruler s only source of legitimacy is derived from his commitment to implementing and enforcing the Sharia (Khattab, 2006:32).

Next, the obstacle to be overcome: Qutb came to believe that governments in the Middle East, whilst proclaiming Islam as the state religion, were not in fact Muslim. Qutb felt that Islam is no longer existing as a social, legal and economic system in society Islam stopped to exist as a system governing the affairs of society, since the hakimiyyah (sovereignty) of Allah was replaced by the hakimiyyah of man. (Khattab, 2006:45). This is where Qutb s idea of the jahiliyyah society comes into prominence. Zimmerman states that jahiliyyah is a term usually used to describe the Arabian Peninsula as being in a state of ignorance prior to the advent of Islam. (2004:234). Literally meaning ignorance , it is used by Qutb to describe socio-political obstacles in the form of existing socio-political systems (Bergesen, 2008:14). By obstacles, Qutb meant obstacles to achieving the goal, his version of an Islamic State. The jahiliyyah society and the true Islamic society are in dichotomous opposition to each other, and cannot co-exist peacefully together. In Qutb s own words, Either Islam or jahiliyyah. There is no other state, half-Islam and half-jahiliyyah, that Islam can accept Either God s government or jahiliyyah government. Either divine law or human whim. & (in Soage, 2009:201). What was radical about Qutb s ideas was the way in which he maintained that many Muslim dominated societies also fell into the same jahiliyyah category that Western ones did. This was due to the influence of secular governance and the Western notion of the nation state as opposed to governance by the Sharia. Thus by pointing the finger at governments, including his own, Qutb was making a direct attack on their source of legitimacy and authority& The Egyptian government would have seen his provocative writings as inciting the population to overthrow the illegitimate apostate government (Zimmerman, 2004:234).

The most important part of Qutb s thesis in relevance to this essay is the method that he provided to overcome the obstacle of the jahiliyyah society. He prescribed just one method for doing this& violent jihad (Zimmerman, 2004:235). He was adamant that the jahiliyyah society is a beast that will not be destroyed without a struggle. Therefore 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. (Qutb, 2005:37). Violence was a necessary precondition of Qutb s strategy. Qutb elaborated that this violent jihad will be carried out by a select vanguard of committed Islamists, pioneers in the forging of the new Islamic system- Musallam conceptualises it excellently& The aim of jihad is to uproot the Jahili way of life and replace it by Allah s sovereignty on earth (al-Hakimiyyah) through a vanguard whose basic task in the long journey is the realization of a Shari ah-based Islamic society. (2005:180) This has inspired many militant Islamist organisations to see themselves as such a vanguard. In Article 19 of its charter, Hamas criticises what it calls jahli elements of society, thus inferring a direct linkage between Qutb s ideas and Hamas ideology (in Mishal and Sela, 2006:187). Finally, Qutb stated that the enemies of Islam may consider it expedient not to take any action against Islam, if Islam leaves them alone But Islam cannot agree to this unless they submit to its authority by paying Jizyah, which is a guarantee that they have opened their doors for the preaching of Islam (in Zimmerman, 2004:236). & Qutb was thus clear in his assertion that this is a movement to be exported globally and violently, and that the non believers must accept the supremacy of the new Islamic system.

ISIS was the first jihadist group to have a degree of success in actually putting Qutb s ideas into practice. The linkages between what Qutb theorised and what ISIS has attempted to do are clear, especially in the approach ISIS has used. To review how successful ISIS has been in achieving its goals, one must first be aware of what its goals are. First of all, it must be understood that ISIS goals are inherently nationalistic. As Mabon and Royle state, with the declaration of the caliphate, ISIS is attempting to build a state and attempting to populate it by calling on Muslims to make hijrah- migration- to ISIS controlled territory, named after the Prophet s journey from Mecca to Medina (2017:11). ISIS is trying to derive legitimacy by linking what they are doing to the activities of the Prophet in the early days of Islam, which are also incidentally glorified by Qutb in his writings (2005:7). This idea is strengthened by Wood when he states that Virtually every major decision and law promulgated by the Islamic State adheres to what it calls the Prophetic methodology, which means following the prophecy and example of Muhammad, in punctilious detail. (The Atlantic, 2015). It is a clear emulation of Qutb s ideology& the attempt not just to overthrow the state but rather remove the system of government and replace it with something else altogether.

Secondly, ISIS has a clearly manifested desire to facilitate a confrontation between dar al-Islam and what is referred to in Dabiq as the Army of Rome and, in doing so, to bring about the end of the world. (Mabon and Royle, 2017:10). ISIS clearly does not fear confrontation with the West& it looks to facilitate it. This is an employment of Qutb s vanguard theory. ISIS sees itself as the first jihadist organisation to explicitly defy the Sykes-Picot agreement and openly strives to export their revolution abroad (Mabon and Royle, 2017:4), thereby fighting the jahiliyyah societies in states other than Iraq and Syria. This has been achieved to some extent in Nigeria with Boko Haram pledging allegiance to ISIS. As state governments lose control of territory in Iraq and Syria, they start to fail in their contractual obligations between them and the population for the provision of basic services such as water, food, shelter and security. Groups that are able to offer this such as ISIS become increasingly attractive to the population. (Mabon and Royle, 2017:4). ISIS can therefore threaten the state structure in non violent ways& it can for example, provide the basic goods and services for the population more satisfactorily than the state government. As Mclauchlin says, Loyalty is itself contingent on continued regime strength. It can be threatened through an alternate system better able to deliver the goods. (2010:338.) This is again based on the Qutbian ideal of replacing the state system with something altogether new, utilising his primary approach of violence but also making it clear that life would improve for the population under the much more advanced system of Sharia governance. The structure of the Islamic state that ISIS have founded follows Qutb s recommendations in almost every respect. There is a chief executive, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. There are nine councils through which the financial, military, legal, security and Shura bodies have input and in both Iraq and Syria there are governors who report to al-Baghdadi (Edwards, 2015:14). It is an attempt to implement a legal system and way of governing based entirely on the Sharia, as Qutb recommended. The Sharia must be regarded as an approach used by Qutb to install a better system than the one the state system can provide. This provided the regime with legitimacy and therefore an increased likelihood of durability.

It is necessary to consider how successful ISIS has been in pursuing their objectives in the Middle East. As Gerges says, Whether it is on the cusp of victory or not, the ideology is here to stay (2016:23). ISIS controls the monopoly of violence over a large region that has a permanent population, extracts taxes from this population and provides services and jobs, all under the shadow of Sharia law. To an extent therefore the approach recommended by Qutb has been successful in aiding ISIS in establishing an Islamic state. True, the structural conditions within Iraq and Syria were highly favourable, but the violent militancy strategy coupled with state building aspirations has worked with ISIS. Unfortunately the experience of living under an Islamic State as prescribed by Qutb and implemented by ISIS is not what many imagined it to be. As Burgat says, the phase of the reintroduction of Islam cannot go on indefinitely. Those who today profit from it will soon have to find new sources of legitimacy, as their secular nationalist predecessors did. (2003:59). What Burgat is saying is that eventually the novelty of this Islamic state will wear off, just as the novelty of the Arab secular state under the dictators did, and that something new will be required to capture the imagination of disenchanted populations. Ultimately legitimacy cannot be secured by force alone& there must be the acquiescence of the population. The Qutbian approach and that of ISIS emphasises first and foremost the role of violence and victory on the battlefield. If ISIS cannot win its battles against the West, its ability to provide vital goods and services will decrease, and so will its legitimacy in the eyes of the population. One area that Qutb could have instead instructed Islamist governments to focus on is a providing of essential state-like services and goods. Instead he chose to give the role of violence primacy, in my opinion a fatal mistake. This use of violence recommended by Qutb makes declaring war on the most powerful militaries in the world necessary. This is not a sustainable policy as ISIS and other Islamic jihadists simply do not have the material capacity to defeat professionalised militaries such as that of the United States (US). Ruling through violence also makes for inherently unstable states. As Finer says the claim to rule by virtue of superior force invites challenge& indeed it is itself a tacit challenge, to any contender who thinks he is strong enough to chance his arm. (1988:15). Qutb also doesn`t account for the intervention of external actors& the number of US airstrikes on ISIS now numbers over 15,000 (US Department of Defense, 2017).The importance attached to violence by Qutb as a way of recognising goals is thus problematic in many areas.

To conclude, Qutb s approach towards attaining an Islamic state is nothing less than radical. The evidence would suggest ISIS has proven that in some form an Islamic state is attainable -given the right conditions- using Qutb s method. This method involves violent revolution, destruction of the system and the implementation of a divinely inspired law that will bring about the best manifestation of governance since the times of the Prophet. The problems facing ISIS now are representative of the key weaknesses in Qutb s thesis however, mainly deriving from a lack of foresight in the years after the initial proclamation of the caliphate. The centrality of violence to Qutb s ideas means that the Islamic state will be in a perpetual state of war, leading to economic disarray, financial hardship for citizens, and their eventual disillusionment with the ability of the Islamic state to provide essential goods and services in a more satisfactory manner than the state. This can be seen in the almost universally awful experience of those going to live in ISIS caliphate from Western societies. In my opinion, therefore, whilst Qutb s approach to achieving an Islamic state is viable as demonstrated by ISIS under very specific structural conditions, the long term durability of such a state is hard to imagine in any situation. ISIS will likely reappear in years to come in another manifestation but Qutb s theory must be seen as self defeating. It is predicated on challenging the global jahiliyyah societies to an existential struggle where either it or the Islamic state must be destroyed- as the case of ISIS is demonstrating currently, Islamist jihadist groups do not have the ability to openly take on and defeat Western militaries, especially not in their own countries. Qutb s thesis therefore is fundamentally short sighted, making the durability of any Islamic state low at best.