Q – Hybrid Learning

QUTB, SAYYID

Batoota — Sun, 09 Jul 2017 11:08:11 +0000

QUTB, SAYYID (9 October 1906–29 August 1966), more fully, Sayyid Qutb Ibrahim Husayn Shadhili, literary critic, novelist, poet, Islamic thinker, and Egypt’s most famous Islamic activist of the twentieth century, exceeding in reputation even the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Husan al-Banna’ (1906-1949). His passionate writings contain powerful images of the maladies of contemporary Islamic societies and an idealization of the faith through the words of the sacred texts. In his overall standing as an Islamic thinker and activist, he may be compared with Turkey’s Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (1873-196o), Pakistan’s Abu al-A’la Mawdudi (19031979), and Iran’s ‘Ali Shari`ati (1933-1977) and Ayatollah Ruhollah al-Musavi Khomeini (1902-1989).
Life. Born on 9 October 1906 in the village of Musha near the city of Asyut in Upper Egypt, Qutb was partly of Indian extraction. He was the oldest of five children, two brothers and three sisters. His father, al-Hajj Qutb Ibrahim, was a member of Mustafa Kamil’s Nationalist Party (al-Hizb al-Watani) and a subscriber to its newspaper, The Banner (AZ-lived’). Qutb’s family was in economic decline at the time of his birth, but it remained prestigious owing to his father’s educated status.
Qutb was a frail child, which may have influenced his tendencies toward deep spirituality. He is reported to have memorized the entire Qur’an by the age of ten. Although he attended the village kuttab (religious school), he soon transferred to the government school, from which he graduated in 1918. Qutb moved to alHulwan (a suburb of Cairo) in either 1919 or 1921. He is said to have lived with a journalist uncle from 1921 until 1925, enrolled in a teacher’s training college in 1925, and graduated in 1928. He apparently attended classes informally in 1928 and 1929 at the Dar al-`Ulum (established in 1872 as a modern Egyptian university on the Western model). In 193o he was formally admitted to this institution and graduated in 1933 with a B.A. in arts education. In recognition of his accomplishments, he was appointed instructor at the Dar al-`Ulum, but he mainly earned his living between 1933 and 1951 as an employee of the Ministry of Education, where he later held the post of inspector for some years.
During the 1930s, Qutb wrote works of fiction, literary criticism, and poetry. He was influenced by such modernists as Taha Husayn, `Abbas al-`Aqad, and Ahmad al-Zayyat. Al-`Agqad in particular introduced him to editors of various newspapers, and he wrote scores of articles over the course of his career for the Egyptian press. Taha Husayn, who was a major adviser of the Ministry of Education, also encouraged him, at one time introducing his lectures to the Officers’ Club after the July 1952 coup that overthrew the monarchy. However, Qutb turned against both al-`Aqqad, whose writings he deemed overly intellectualized, and Husayn, on account of his Western orientations. Eventually, Qutb left the Ministry of Education owing to disagreements with the government’s educational policies as well as its submissiveness to the British. Qutb joined the opposition Wafd Party of Sa’d Zaghlul but eventually abandoned it to enter the breakaway Sadist Party on its emergence in 1937, only to break with it in turn in 1942.
In 1948, still in the ministry’s employ, Qutb was dispatched to the United States to study Western methods of education. He studied at Wilson’s Teachers’ College (currently, the University of the District of Columbia), at the University of Northern Colorado’s Teachers’ College, where he earned an M. A. in education, and at Stanford University.
Qutb spent about three years abroad, leaving America in summer 195o and visiting England, Switzerland, and Italy on his way back to Egypt in 1951. His trip to the United States was a defining moment for him, marking a transition from literary and educational pursuits to intense religious commitment. Although he acknowledged the economic and scientific achievements of American society, Qutb was appalled by its racism, sexual permissiveness, and pro-Zionism.
Back in Egypt, Qutb refused a promotion to adviser in the Ministry of Education and began writing articles for various newspapers on social and political themes. In 1953, Qutb joined the Muslim Brotherhood and was appointed editor of its weekly paper, Al-ikhwdn almuslimun. Not long afterward, he became the director of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Propaganda Section and was chosen to serve on its highest bodies, the Working Committee and the Guidance Council.
It is said that Qutb was a key liaison between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Free Officers, who overthrew the monarchy in 1952-some of them, including Gamal Abdel Nasser, visited his house just before the coup, and Qutb was the sole civilian to attend meetings of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) after the seizure of power. He agreed to be an adviser to the RCC on cultural matters and briefly headed the Liberation Rally, the government-sponsored mass-mobilization organization.
However, relations between the Free Officers and the brotherhood soon deteriorated as it became clear that each side had a different agenda. The brotherhood called for a referendum on the new constitution, anticipating that Egyptians would demand an Islamic fundamental law, but the RCC refused. The Muslim Brotherhood condemned the RCC’s agreement with Britain in July 1954 to end the occupation because that agreement allowed the British to return their troops within seven years if they perceived a threat to their interests. The brotherhood demanded a plebiscite on the agreement, but it, too, was rejected out of hand. A tense standoff prevailed until October 1954, when shots were fired at Nasser during a speech.
The Muslim Brotherhood has always maintained that this incident was a provocation engineered deliberately by the Free Officers to justify a sweeping crackdown against it. Qutb, whom the regime had already detained for three months in early 1954, and then released, was caught in the net of arrests. Although he suffered from poor health, Qutb was brutally tortured. In May 1955 he was transferred to the prison hospital. In July, the court sentenced him to fifteen years in prison, most of which he spent in the hospital. He witnessed continued torture against his colleagues in jail, with perhaps the worst episode occurring in 1957 when more than a score of the Muslim Brotherhood inmates were killed outright and dozens injured. Accordingly, Qutb set in motion ideas for the creation of a disciplined secret cadre of devoted followers whose task originally was limited to self-defense. Without declaring it publicly, however, Qutb came to believe in using violence against the government if it used force against his organization. Still later, he came to the view that violence was justified even if the regime were merely deemed unjust and refused to alter its behavior.
Owing to intervention by Iraqi president `Abd alSalam `Arif, Qutb was released in May 1964. But in August 1965, he was rearrested on charges of terrorism and sedition. The trial was a fiasco. The authorities initially permitted media coverage, but when the defendants talked about their torture, the proceedings were held behind closed doors. Incontrovertible evidence against Qutb was apparently not presented, as his revolutionary tract, Ma’alim ft al-tariq (Milestones; 1964)the chief document on which the prosecutors relieddid not explicitly call for armed overthrow of the state. Rather, it urged resistance by turning away from existing society and creating a model ummah (community of believers) which eventually would establish true Islam. Despite great international pressure, the government executed Qutb and two colleagues on 29 August 1966. Ever since, he has been regarded as a martyr by his supporters.
Thought. Perhaps more than any other post-World War II Sunni Muslim thinker, Sayyid Qutb personifies the determination of Islamist movements to oppose both the West and leaders in Islamic societies whom they see to be disregarding Allah’s law. Qutb regarded the leaders of Islamic societies of which he disapproved, and the societies that went along with them, to be living in a state of jahiliyah (lit., ignorance of revelation’s truths), which can be considered anything that is inimical to Islam. His most important political work, Milestones, contains trenchant attacks against jahiliyah, which he perceives to pervade contemporary life throughout the Islamic world. [See Jahiliyah] Qutb’s writings have been translated into Persian, Turkish, Urdu, English, and other languages. Their availability in Iran during the 1960s and 1970s is a matter of public record. Indeed, ‘Ali Khamene’i, who was to succeed Khomeini as the “revolutionary leader,” translated into Persian parts of Qutb’s Qur’anic commentary, Fi zildl al-Qur’dn (In the Shade of the Qur’an).
Qutb’s writings show his uncompromising commitment to the sacred text. It is self-evident to Qutb that if the Qur’an contains a message, then human beings must implement that message. Qutb was so clear on this in his own mind that it never occurred to him that Muslims, living in historical time, reinterpret their traditions and their past in the context of their contemporary historical circumstances. Qutb plainly held the view that Islam is a timeless body of ideas and practices. Thus, there is no excuse, in his mind, for people’s failure to adhere to it. This failure is a matter of brazen, selfconscious refusal. to accept God’s word and not a question of hermeneutical discourse.
Qutb thought of Islam as a comprehensive way of life. Islam thus provides model solutions to all aspects of human existence. In his most sustained exposition of his views, Khasd’is al-tasawwur al-Islami wa-muqawwimatuh (The Characteristics and Constitutive Elements of the Islamic Conception; 1962), Qutb elaborates on the themes of the oneness of Allah, Allah’s divine nature, the permanence of Allah’s order, its all-encompassing nature, the balanced interplay between what can be known and what must remain unknown, the positive quality of Allah’s construction of the universe, and the real, practical engagement by man in this universe. It is sufficient to say here that ultimately these qualities range Islam, in Qutb’s perspective, along an axis of social commitment and activism.
One key to Qutb’s overall social and political program is its organicism and connotations of corporatism. This is interesting in view of his explicit rejection of Greek thought and Islamic Neoplatonic philosophy, themselves steeped in corporate and organic assumptions about society. More specifically, Qutb believes that Muslims cohere in a quiddity which he calls al-tajammu’ al-haraki (“dynamic concrescence”). This entity is in fact the embodiment of the ummah, which is reified into a living organism with attributes of thought and behavior. The success of this dynamic concrescence lies in its acceptance of the trust given to it by Allah to master the world and benefit from its resources, but the purpose of this mastery is to obey the sovereign commands, the hakimiyah, of Allah. Qutb holds that although the dynamic concrescence is a very real phenomenon acting in society and the world, and that it experiences change, has practical purposes, and is thoroughly enmeshed in the immediacy of everyday existence, the sources for its existence and behavior lie entirely outside itself and are rooted in revelation (cf. esp. Binder, 1988, pp. 178179)
Qutb is not an advocate of the majesty of human reason. The apprehension of knowledge is not a matter of intellectual activity but of the reception of truths that are absolutely divine in their origins. In his perspective, the workings of discursive logic or inductive analysis are not necessary for, and are actually inimical to, the triumph of mankind in Allah’s universe. Rather, that triumph is vouchsafed by the ability and willingness of the human mind to absorb self-evident truths whose secrets are unlocked by divine texts.
Reflecting the ideas of Mawdudi, Qutb focused on the so-called hakimiyah verses of the Qur’an (5.44, 45, and 47): “those who do not judge according to what Allah has revealed are unbelievers . . . oppressors . . . sinners.” Qutb, in what his opponents regard to be a reprehensible innovation (bid `ah), given centuries of precedent set by commentators on the Qur’an, reinterpreted these verses by changing the meaning of the verb yahkumu from “judge” to “rule,” thereby implicitly sanctioning collective action to dismiss a ruler who failed to apply Allah’s revelations. Muslims who are actively engaged in the dynamic community of faith are thus mandated not only to apply Allah’s laws as he has revealed them, but they are authorized and even commanded to replace any leaders who fail to do so. Invoking authoritative opinions of jurists from earlier centuries, especially those of Tag! al-Din Ahmad ibn Taymiyah (d. 1328) against the Mongol ruler of the time, Qutb and his supporters came to the view that Islam made armed resistance to nominally Muslim rulers who were deemed to be anti-Islamic not only permissible or laudatory but mandatory.
Among the movements that Qutb’s writings have inspired are the Egyptian groups known as al-Fanniyah al`Askariyah (The Technical Military Academy Group), Jama’at al-Takfir wa al-Hijrah (Pronouncing Unbelief Upon Infidels and Emigration to Islam), al-Jihad, the group that claimed responsibility for the assassination of President Anwar el-Sadat in 1981, and al-Jama’at alIslamiyah (the Islamic Group). A reading of The Absent Precept (Al faridah al-gha’ibah) (1 98 t ), the pamphlet written by Muhammad `Abd al-Salam Faraj, and the revolutionary pronunciamento of Al jihad, reflects alJihad’s indebtedness to Qutb’s ideas about jahiliyah, hakimiyah, and jihdd. Groups outside Egypt have claimed the Qutb legacy as well. His writings are frequently read by Sunni opposition groups, such as the Jabhat al-Inqadh al-Islami (Islamic Salvation Front) in Algeria, the Tunisian Islamic Tendency Movement (alIttijah al-Islami; now called the Hizb al-Nahdah), and the Muslim Brotherhood in Sudan, Syria, and Jordan, and Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Shi’i groups, including Hizbullah in Lebanon, the Hizb alDa’wah in Iraq, and even the Iranian clerical establishment have taken certain cues from Qutb, although they disagree with him on the question of leadership. It can thus be concluded that Qutb’s role in inspiring Islamic revivalist movements since the late 1960s might be even greater than that of Ayatollah Khomeini. [All of the groups named above are the subject of independent entries. For al-Jihad, see Jihad Organizations.]
Ultimately, Qutb’s worldview rests on a manifest ahistoricity. He is not interested in a historically grounded analysis of the development of law in Islam, for example. Rather, one finds repeated references to the primary sacred texts, overwhelmingly the Qur’an, and to a much lesser extent the hadiths Qutb does not acknowledge that Qur’anic and hadith texts might not be selfevident and that, as they are interpreted over the centuries, people might come to different conclusions as to their meanings.
The tone of his writings is exhortatory and didactic. As a professional educator, Qutb stresses the pedagogic role of the tutor instructing students in the verities of the true faith. The enemy is at the gates in the form of international neo-Crusaders seeking to destroy the identity of the Muslims and domestic despots who set up their own laws in defiance of what Allah has revealed. Although Qutb witnessed first hand the scientific and technological advances of the West, he regarded the West as spiritually bankrupt and implacably opposed to Islam. He attacked Marxism as tantamount to the enslavement of human beings.
Despite this unreconstructed rejection of Western thought, Qutb, as is often the case with other twentiethcentury Islamic thinkers, does not hesitate to invoke concepts rooted in the Western tradition. He does not acknowledge the Western provenance of such ideas, reaching into the early Islamic period to argue that they in fact are endemic to Islam, but in fact, many of these concepts derive either from the ancient Greek tradition or otherwise emanate from the period of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution and its aftermath.
An example of Western roots to Qutb’s thought can be seen in his concept of democracy. No Arabic word for this term exists, so the cognate al-dimuqratiyah has been devised. Despite Qutb’s sensitivity to language issues, he never asks why Muslims use the word in this Western cognate form. Qutb is satisfied to find two brief references to shura (“consultation”) in the Qur’an (3.159 and 42.38) from which he constructs an edifice or system that he refers to as “democracy.” Although commentators of the Qur’an for centuries have understood these two verses to mean something different from the modern notion of political democracy in its twin attributes of individual freedom and social equality as institutionalized in representative bodies endowed with sovereign authority, Qutb is not deterred from vindicating the Islamic roots of democracy. [See Democracy.]
The same can be said of social justice. It was not until the twentieth century that the phrase al-`adalah alijtima’iyah (“social justice”) was even used by jurists in Islamic law, although medieval writers, such as Abu Bakr al-Turtushi (d. 1127), Najm al-Din al-Tfifi (d. 1316), Ibn Taymiyah, and Abu Zayd `Abd al-Rahman ibn Khaldun (d. 14o6), focused on the justice and the injustice of rulers and the requirement that the state pursue justice to ensure the maslahah (general interest) of the Muslims. [See Maslahah.] Qutb’s method is to find verses in the Qur’an referring to Allah bidding people to “justice” (16.90) or verses pertaining to the perfection of Allah’s words in “justice” (6.115). The view of justice that emerges from the scripture is a highly abstract and idealized interpretation of what can be termed “divine justice,” perceived without regard to social reality.
By contrast, social justice, as understood in modern discourse, comes from the tradition of natural law and the philosophy of law, which are anthropocentric. The very phrase “social justice” implies equity considerations in the context of the development of human societies in historical time, rather than a reified category which is theocentric at its very core. Accordingly, the phrase “social justice,” so important for Qutb, contains within it the subversion of his project, which is based on the belief that truth is to be found immediately in revelation, not by reference to human endeavors in history. [See Justice, article on Social Justice.]
Notwithstanding, as would be the case with Shari`ati, a critique of Qutb that remains at this level misses the point. His advocacy of revolutionary change to restore a pure Islamic order has resonated powerfully among those disgusted with the system that the leaders of the Muslim world have erected. Qutb’s evocations and invocations of concepts that seemingly come from Western traditions are apparently one of the ironies of the Islamic resurgence that has inhered during the last generation. But the measure of Qutb’s contributions will no doubt be the impact that he has had in the past two or three decades among Islamists as the nonpareil exemplar of collective protest against those deemed to be the enemies of Islam.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barakat, Muhammad Tawfiq. Sayyid Qutb: Khuldsat hayatihi, manhajuhu ft al-Harakah, al-Naqd al-Muwajjah Ilayh (Sayyid Qutb: A Summary of His Life, the Dynamics of His Method, and a Critique). Beirut, 197?. Particularly useful for certain biographical information.
Binder, Leonard. “The Religious Aesthetic of Sayyid Qutb.” In Islamic Liberalism, pp. 170-205. Chicago, 1988. Sophisticated and incisive analysis of Qutb’s writing in the context of a sympathetic critique of the liberal dimension in contemporary Muslim thought. Haddad, Yvonne Yazbeck. “The Qur’anic Justification for an Islamic Revolution: The View of Sayyid Qutb.” Middle East Journal 37.1 (Winter 1983): 14-29. Important essay delineating Qutb’s political activism by reference to the sacred texts of Islam.
Haddad, Yvonne Yazbeck. “Sayyid Qutb: Ideologue of Islamic Revival.” In Voices of Resurgent Islam, edited by John L. Esposito, . pp. 67-98. New York and Oxford, 1983. Assessment of Qutb’s writings in the broader context of activist Islamist movements.
Jansen, J. J. G. The Neglected Duty. New York and London, 1986. Noteworthy work that includes an assessment of the ideas of the “al-Jihad” organization, focusing on their revolutionary tract, AIFaridah al-Ghd’ibah, itself influenced by Qutb’s ideas.
Kepel, Gilles. Muslim Extremism in Egypt: The Prophet and Pharaoh. Berkeley, 1985. Contains important information on Islamic groups influenced by Qutb’s ideas.
Khalid-i, Salah `Abd al-Fattah. Sayyid Qutb, al-Shahid al-Hayy (Sayyid Qutb, the Living Martyr). Amman, 1981. One of the most reliable works on Qutb’s life.
Mitchell, Richard P. The Society of the Muslim Brothers. London, 1969. Classic work on the Muslim Brotherhood, including references to Qutb’s role.
Moussalli, Abroad S. Radical Islamic Fundamentalism: The Ideological and Political Discourse of Sayyid Qutb. Beirut, 1992. Sustained analysis of Qutb’s ideas by a keen observer, stressing the progressiveness of Qutb’s writings in the context of fundamentalist and modernist thought.
Qutb, Muhammad `All. Sayyid Qutb: Al-Shahid al-A’zal (Sayyid Qutb: The Unarmed Martyr). Cairo, 1974. Appreciation of Qutb’s work by his brother.
Sivan, Emmanuel. Radical Islam. New Haven, 1985. Places the thought of contemporary radical Islamists in the context of the history of ideas.

QUR’AN

Batoota — Sun, 09 Jul 2017 07:12:39 +0000

QUR’AN
1-History of the Text
2-The Qur’an as Scripture
3-The Qur’an in Muslim Thought and Practice
The first article gives a brief history of the origin, collection, and structure of the text. The second presents the Qur’dn as a unique communication from God and provides a survey of modern exegesis of the text. The third discusses the central role of the Qur’dn in Muslim piety. For further discussion of the teachings of the Qur’dn, see Islam, overview article.
History of the Text
The Qur’an is a unique phenomenon in human religious history. It is held by its adherents to exist beyond the mundane sphere as the eternal and immutable word of God, “a glorious qur’an [preserved] in a well-guarded tablet” (85.21-22). It is also an earthly book whose history is intimately tied to the life and history of an earthly community.
Although it was shaped by the Muslim community, the Qur’an in fact created that community and remains the foundation-stone of its faith and morality. Many of its verses were circumstantially determined by the social and religious conditions and questions of the Prophet’s society; yet the Qur’an is believed to transcend all considerations of time and space.
Revelation. The Qur’an is for Muslims the literal word of God revealed to the prophet Muhammad. Like a number of pious Arabs, known as hanifs, who rejected the idolatrous and immoral ways of their people, Muhammad periodically left his home for solitary prayer and meditation (tahannuth) in a cave on Mount Hira’ in the vicinity of Makkah (Mecca). During one such retreat in his fortieth year an awesome person, later identified as the angel Gabriel, appeared to Muhammad as he sat one evening wrapped in deep meditation. Taking hold of him, the angel pressed Muhammad so hard that he thought he was dying. This he repeated three times with the command “Read” or “Recite” (iqra’). Muhammad asked, “What shall I read?” The angel then recited the first five verses of surah 96, which are traditionally considered to be the first revelation of the Qur’an.
According to other reports, when the Prophet saw Gabriel he was frightened; he ran home and asked his family to cover him up. In that state of fear and trepidation revelation came down, ordering him to “rise and warn” (74-1-2). After a period of uncertainty lasting somewhere between six months and two years during which revelation was temporarily interrupted, the Prophet was reassured that the revelations he was receiving were from God, and that the spirit he encountered was an angel and not a demon. Thereafter revelation continued without interruption until his death in AH 10/632 CE. The formative history of the Qur’an was therefore coterminous with the Prophet’s life.
Qur’an and Prophet. Tradition reports that when revelation came to the Prophet, he fell into a trancelike state. During such times he is said to have seen Gabriel either in human guise or in his angelic form. At still other times the Prophet heard sounds like the ringing of a bell; these sounds he apprehended as words that he remembered and communicated to others. The normal mode of revelation, however, was direct communication (wahy) by the angel Gabriel.
During the Prophet’s life many of his companions, as well as some of his wives, had their own partial collections (masdhif sg., mushaf) of the Qur’an, which they used in their prayers and private devotions. Other collections were made by the Prophet’s amanuenses, known as the scribes of revelation.
These early collections differed in important respects, such as the number and order of the surahs and variant readings of certain verses, words, and phrases. With the spread of Islam outside Arabia, private collections and hence variant readings multiplied. Furthermore, as different codices gained popularity in particular regions of the expanding Islamic empire, the need soon arose for an official codex.
Collection of the Qur’an. The crystallization of the Qur’an was a long process, and its early stages were shrouded in political, theological, and juristic exigencies. Each of the four rightly guided caliphs has been credited with either initiating or forwarding this important process. Historians and traditionists are, however, unanimously agreed that an official codex was adopted under the aegis of the third caliph, `Uthman (r. 644-656), within twenty years of the Prophet’s death. The difficult task of eliminating rival codices was gradually but never fully achieved; many peculiarities of the early codices have survived in the official variant readings of the Qur’an. By the third/ninth century a universally accepted orthography and system of vocalization of the `Uthmanic codex was This helped to reduce a multitude of variant readings to only seven equally valid ones. Among these, the reading of `Asim 4:344), transmitted, by Hafs, d. 805), predominates in most areas of the Muslim world today. The royal Egyptian edition of 1924, which follows this reading and has itself become a standard text has further contributed to its popularity.
Structure and Internal History. The Qur’an is a rather small book, consisting of 114 surahs or chapters varying in length from three to 286 verses. The surahs were arranged roughly by length, which means that the earliest and shortest surahs were placed at the end, and the latest and longest ones at the beginning.
Very early commentators classified Qur’anic materials into Meccan and Medinan surahs. On the basis of such internal evidence as change in style, idiom, and subject matter of the revelations, modern Western scholarship has divided the Meccan period into early, middle, and late periods.
In spite of such efforts to construct a broad chronology of the Qur’an, this goal remains impossible, because the sacred text itself provides no reliable framework for the history of its revelation. Nevertheless, knowledge of its chronology is crucial for an understanding of the early history of the Muslim community.
The Qur’an makes numerous references to particular events and situations in the life of the Prophet and his society. On the basis of such allusions an important field of Qur’anic study known as “occasions” or “causes (asbab) of revelation” was developed. This subject is closely related to another field, the study of the abrogated and abrogating verses of the Qur’an. Both fields are, moreover, of great significance for the developments of law and theology. But because law and theology have been inexorably bound to the political and sectarian realities of Muslim history, the study of the chronology of the Qur’an has likewise been deeply affected by political and sectarian considerations.
In itself, the Qur’an has been a closed book since the death of the Prophet; but the Qur’an has continued to interact with the history of the Muslim world. From the beginning Muslims have dedicated their best minds, voices, and musical talents to the exegesis and recitation of the Qur’an. While Western scholarship has subjected the Qur’an to the full rigor of modern historical and literary criticism, contemporary Islamic scholarship has limited itself to the criticism of the Qur’anic sciences. As for the Qur’an itself, it remains the criterion by which everything else is judged.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bell, Richard. Bell’s Introduction to the Qur’an. New ed., revised by W. Montgomery Watt . Edinburgh, 1970. Basic English study, and still useful, but too speculative and inconclusive.
Burton, John. The Collection of the Qur’an. Cambridge, 1977. Through a thorough analysis of classical juristic, hadith, and exegetical sources, Burton arrives at the opposite conclusion from that of Wansbrough. The so-called `Uthmanic codex was in fact, Burton asserts, the mushaf used during the Prophet’s life. Thus it was not `Uthman, but Muhammad who first collected the Qur’an.
Goldziher, Ignacz. Die Richtungen der islamischen Koranauslegung (1920). Leiden, 1970. Classic work on Qur’anic exegesis, beginning with a very useful discussion of the history of the Qur’anic text. Jeffery,, Arthur, ed. Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur’an. Leiden, 1937. Important piece of research into the codex fragments preserved in classical works on the subject.
Khu’ , Abu al-Qasim al-. Al-Bayan fi Tafsir al-Qur `an. Beirut, 1975. Al-Khu’i (or al-Kho’i; d. 1993) was the supreme authority (marja`) in legal and religious matters for the Twelver Shi’i community. Long before Burton, he arrived at essentially the same conclusion. His thesis is that “`Uthman did not collect a mushaf, but rather united the Muslim community upon an already existing and generally excepted one.” The work also deals with many important issues in Qur’anic studies.
Noldeke, Theodor. Geschichte des Qordns (1860). Revised and enlarged by Friedrich Schwally. 2 vols. Leipzig, 1909. Revised and enlarged by Gotthelf Bergstrasser and Otto Pretzl. 3 vols. Leipzig, 1905-1938. Rev. ed. Hildesheim, 1964. Basic work on the history of the Qur’an.
Sa’id, Labib al-. The Recited Koran. Translated by Bernard G. Weiss et ah. Princeton, 1975. Muslim response to Western critical scholarship on the Qur’an.
Wansbrough John. Quranic Studies. Oxford, 1977. Using biblical critical methods in the study of the Qur’an, Wansbrough concludes that the sacred book did not attain its present state until the third century. Similar arguments are presented in his Sectarian Milieu (Oxford, 1978).
Welch, Alford T. “Kur’an.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed., vol. 5, PP. 400-432. Leiden, 1960-. Welch remains one of the few committed proponents of Bell’s theories. The article provides a useful overview of Western Qur’anic studies and a number of the author’s own conclusions.
MAHMOUD AYOUB

QATAR

Batoota — Fri, 07 Jul 2017 17:42:30 +0000

Qatar (/ˈkætɑːr/, /ˈkɑːtɑːr/ (About this sound listen), /ˈkɑːtər/ or /kəˈtɑːr/ (About this sound listen); Arabic: قطر‎‎ Qatar [ˈqɑtˤɑr]; local vernacular pronunciation: [ˈɡɪtˤɑr]), officially the State of Qatar (Arabic: دولة قطر‎‎ Dawlat Qatar), is a sovereign country located in Western Asia, occupying the small Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula. Its sole land border is with Saudi Arabia to the south, with the rest of its territory surrounded by the Persian Gulf. An arm of the Persian Gulf separates Qatar from the nearby island country of Bahrain.

Following Ottoman rule, Qatar became a British protectorate in the early 20th century until gaining independence in 1971. Qatar has been ruled by the House of Thani since the early 19th century. Sheikh Jassim bin Mohammed Al Thani was the founder of the State of Qatar. Qatar is a hereditary monarchy and its head of state is Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. Whether it should be regarded as a constitutional or an absolute monarchy is disputed. In 2003, the constitution was overwhelmingly approved in a referendum, with almost 98% in favour. In early 2017, Qatar’s total population was 2.6 million: 313,000 Qatari citizens and 2.3 million expatriates.
Qatar is a high-income economy, backed by the world’s third-largest natural-gas reserves and oil reserves. The country has the highest per capita income in the world. Qatar is classified by the UN as a country of very high human development and is the most advanced Arab state for human development.Qatar is a significant power in the Arab world, supporting several rebel groups during the Arab Spring both financially and through its globally expanding media group, Al Jazeera Media Network. For its size, Qatar wields disproportionate influence in the world, and has been identified as a middle power. Qatar will host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, becoming the first Arab country to do so.
In June 2017, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt, among other Gulf states, cut off diplomatic relations with Qatar, accusing it of supporting and funding terrorism and manipulating internal affairs of its neighboring states, causing the 2017 Qatar diplomatic crisis.
History of Qatar

QANUN

Batoota — Fri, 07 Jul 2017 17:10:11 +0000

Qanun is an Arabic word (Arabic: قانون‎‎, qānūn; Ottoman Turkish: قانون‎, kānūn, derived from Ancient Greek: κανών kanōn, which is also the root for the modern English word “canon”). It can refer to laws established by Muslim sovereigns, in particular the Ottoman sultans, in contrast to sharia, the body of law elaborated by Muslim jurists. It is thus frequently translated as “dynastic law”. The idea of kanun first entered the Muslim World in the thirteenth century, as it was borrowed from the Mongol Empire in the aftermath of their invasions. The 10th sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Suleiman was known in the Ottoman Empire as Suleiman Kanuni (“the Lawgiver”), due to his code of laws.
After the fall of the Abbasid Caliphate in 1258, a practice known to the Turks and Mongols transformed itself into qanun, which gave power to caliphs, governors, and sultans alike to “make their own regulations for activities not addressed by the sharia.” This became increasingly important as the Middle East started to modernize, thus running into the problems of a modern state, which were not covered by sharia. The Qanun began to unfold as early as Umar I (586–644 CE).Many of the regulations covered by qanun were based on financial matters or tax systems adapted through the law and regulations of those territories Islam conquered.
see also LAW
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QAJAR DYNASTY

Batoota — Fri, 07 Jul 2017 16:50:04 +0000

QAJAR DYNASTY. The last of a series of tribal (or tribally based) dynasties that ruled Iran since the tenth century, the Qajars (1796-1925), like the Safavids, ruled a territory roughly coterminus with contemporary Iran. Most historiography, both Western and Iranian, has stressed negatives about the Qajars, saying, with much justice, that they accomplished little reform or modernization and did little to hold off British and Russian incursions. Some recent historiography has been more positive, stressing the overwhelming obstacles facing the dynasty and its attempts to overcome some of them. The Qajars did succeed in recreating a centralized state and quelling separatist revolts. Its avoidance of colonial conquest, however, was more a result of the Anglo-Russian rivalry than its own strength.
The Qajar dynasty began as a tribal federation in northwest Iran that engaged in a rivalry for power with another federation under the southwestern Zand rulers. A Qajar leader castrated in boyhood, Agha Muhammad Khan, was captured and kept under house arrest by the Zands, but on the death of a Zand ruler, he returned to lead his tribal forces, taking most of Iran by 1790. Becoming shah in 1796, he was known for cruelty and was assassinated in 1797. He was succeeded by a nephew, Fath `Ali Shah, who ruled until 1834. Qajar unification ended the civil strife of the eighteenth century.
Fath `Ali was brought into European diplomacy by the British and French, who at different points in the Napoleonic period wanted Iran as an ally against Russia. Russia wanted Iranian-held territory in Georgia, Armenia, and North Azerbaijan, and in the first RussoIranian War (18o4-1813), it took much of this territory. The Treaty of Gulistan (1813) ratified Iran’s losses to the Russians.
European presence and the Russian war led Crown Prince `Abbas Mirza, who ruled in Azerbaijan, to try Western training of his forces, and he sent students abroad to improve the military. His chief minister continued reform efforts when he joined the central government after `Abbas Mirza’s death in 1833. This death deprived the Qajars of their last devoted reformer. Reform was harder in Iran than in, say, Egypt or Turkey, owing to size and difficulty of communications, the heavy presence of nomadic tribal groups tied to old ways, and the much smaller presence of Europeans and European trade, given Iran’s distance from the West.
Disagreements over interpretation of the Treaty of Gulistan and agitation by some `ulama’. (religious scholars) led to a second Russo-Iranian War (1826-1828). The Russian victory in 1828 was incorporated into the Treaty of Turkomanchai, which gave Russia more territory, a cash indemnity, extraterritorial rights, and a 5 percent limit on import tariffs, with no internal duties allowed. These provisions, similar to those exacted in the nineteenth century by Western powers on other undeveloped countries, put Iranian merchants, who had to pay internal duties, at a disadvantage. In later decades these provisions were extended to the other European powers by “most favored nation” clauses in treaties.
The killing by an `ulama’-inspired crowd of the Russian envoy Griboyedov in 1829 has been variously interpreted, but clearly it involved a major antiforeign incident and showed independent power by the `ulama’. Under the reign of Muhammad Shah (1834-1848), Western influence grew; there was a revolt by the Isma`ilis, who left for India with their leader, the Aga Khan; and a more important heretical movement, the Babis, began in the 1840s. The succeeding shah, the teenaged Nasir al-Din (1848-1897), brought with him from Tabriz his chief minister, Amir Kabir, Iran’s main reforming leader. Amir Kabir led in suppressing Babi uprisings after the death of Muhammad Shah, and the Bab was executed in 185o. Amir Kabir, also initiated major reforms, such as creating a defense industry to support the military, strengthening the Western training of troops, and forming the first Western-style advanced school for the training of military and governmental figures, the Dar al-Funun. He also cut sinecures and pensions. He made enemies among vested interests, including the powerful queen mother. His enemies convinced the shah to have him removed from office in 1851 and to have him killed in 1852. Most of his reforms were reversed, and the few later reformers were also largely unsuccessful. [See Ismd’lliyah; Babism.]
Although some historians are now sympathetic to Nasir al-Din Shah, he did not reverse Iran’s increasing dependence on Britain and Russia. His next reforming minister, Mirza Husayn Khan Sipahsalar, in the early 1870s, tried to reorganize ministries and the military but foundered on his belief that foreigners must develop the Iranian economy. He was, along with another reformer, Malkom Khan, one of those who convinced the shah to accept the all-encompassing Reuter Concession of 1872, giving control of most of Iran’s assets to a British subject. [See the biography of Malkom Khdn.] Returning from abroad, Sipahsalar and the shah were greeted by an opposition group uniting the shah’s favorite wife, some courtiers, and `ulama’. and Sipahsalar was dismissed and the concession abrogated on a pretext. Concession granting resumed in the 1888-1890 period, culminating in a mass movement led by `ulama’. and merchants that forced the shah to cancel a monopoly tobacco concession to a British subject in 1892. Nasir al-Din Shah was assassinated by a follower of Jamal alDin al-Afghani in 1897 and was succeeded by his sickly son Muzaffar al-Din Shah. Weakness without major reform encouraged revolt.
Popular discontent, backed by the `ulama’. merchants, and a growing group of progressive intellectuals, spread in the early twentieth century and culminated in the Constitutional Revolution (1905-1911), which resulted in a written constitutional and a parliament (Majlis). Muzaffar al-Din Shah died in 1907; his counterrevolutionary son, Muhammad ‘Ali Shah, was deposed by the constitutionalists in 1909 and followed by the boy shah, Ahmad, under a regent.

A Zoroastrian Family Tehran 1910

With British and Russian troops occupying Iran during World War I, and the British after, and Iran being a battleground for the Turks, Iran’s government had little freedom of action, and the shah was a cipher. In 1919, the British negotiated a treaty with three ministers amounting to protectorate status for Iran, but the Majlis never ratified it. Facing a government stalemate, the head of the British troops in Iran encouraged an eager colonel in the Cossack Brigade, Reza Khan (Riza Khan), to lead a coup, supported by the pro-British journalist, Sayyid Z iya al-Din Tabataba’i. The latter was soon forced out by Reza, who, after an abortive attempt at a republic on the Turkish model, got the Majlis to approve the ending of the Qajar dynasty and the establishment of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1925. Thus ended the century of the Qajars, who, while hardly illustrious, did help keep Iran together and accomplished some change, chiefly in the direction of gradual centralization and bureaucratization of the government and partial acceptance of constitutional reform.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Algar, Hamid. Religion and State in Iran, 1785-1906. Berkeley, 1969. The first book-length treatment of the `ulama’. in Qajar times, which takes an optimistic view of their influence and motivation. Arjomand, Said Amir. The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam. Chicago and London, 1984. Revisionist scholarly view of `ulama’-state relations from the beginning to 1890.
Avery, Peter, et al., eds. The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 7, From Nadir Shah to the Islamic Republic. Cambridge, 1991. Contains articles on the Qajar period by Gavin Hambly, Nikki R. Keddie and Mehrdad Amanat, Stanford J. Shaw, F. Kazemzadeh, Rose Greaves, Ann K. S. Lambton, Richard Tapper, Charles Issawi, Hamid Algar, Peter Chelkowski, and Peter Avery.
Bakhash, Shaul. Iran: Monarchy, Bureaucracy, and Reform under the Qajars, 1858-1896. London, 1978. Analytic study of the efforts at governmental reform under Nasir al-Din Shah.
Bayat, Mangol. Mysticism and Dissent: Socioreligious Thought in Qajar Iran. Syracuse, N.Y., 1982. The only serious Western-language study of nineteenth-century thinkers, stressing their roots in older Iranian thought as well as in new Western ideas.
Bosworth, C. E., and Carole Hillenbrand, eds. Qajar Iran: Political, Social, and Cultural Change, 1800-1925. Edinburgh, 1983. Festschrift for the late L. P. Elwell-Sutton, with far more internal consistency and substance than many such volumes.
Garthwaite, Gene. Khans and Shahs: A Documentary Analysis of the Bakhtiari in Iran. New York and Cambridge, 1983. Rare tribal history, showing the political importance of the main tribal confederations in Qajar Iran.
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QADHDHAFI, MU`AMMAR AL

Batoota — Wed, 05 Jul 2017 16:04:43 +0000

Muammar Mohammed Abu Minyar Gaddafi(June 7, 1942 – 20 October 2011), commonly known as Colonel Gaddafi, was a Libyan revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He governed Libya as Revolutionary Chairman of the Libyan Arab Republic from 1969 to 1977 and then as the “Brotherly Leader” of the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from 1977 to 2011. He was initially ideologically committed to Arab nationalism and Arab socialism, but he came to rule according to his own Third International Theory.
Gaddafi was born near Sirte to an impoverished Bedouin family. He became an Arab nationalist while at school in Sabha, later enrolling in the Royal Military Academy, Benghazi. Within the military he founded a revolutionary cell which, in a 1969 coup, deposed the Western-backed Senussi monarchy of Idris. Having taken power, Gaddafi converted Libya into a republic governed by his Revolutionary Command Council. Ruling by decree, he ejected both Italian colonists and Western military bases from Libya while strengthening ties to Arab nationalist governments—particularly Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt—and unsuccessfully advocating Pan-Arab political union. An Islamic modernist, he introduced sharia as the basis for the legal system and promoted “Islamic socialism”. The oil industry was nationalised, with the increasing state revenues used to bolster the military, fund foreign revolutionaries, and implement social programs emphasising house-building, healthcare, and education projects. In 1973, he initiated a “Popular Revolution” with the formation of General People’s Committees, purported to be a system of direct democracy, but retained personal control over major decisions. He outlined his Third International Theory that year, publishing these ideas in The Green Book.
In 1971 Qadhdhafi tried to reintroduce Islamic law in Libya. In 1973 the first steps of the “popular revolution” were taken, and this process led to the proclamation of the Arab Popular Socialist Libyan Jamahiriyah. The Jamahiriyah is supposed to be a new system of government: placing power in the hands of the masses, it is expressed by a peculiar structure of committees that represent the decision-making and executive bodies of the state. As a consequence, a division arose between power and revolution, until then united.
From 1977 onward there were two further important elements: the replacement of a rigid and repressive policy at home by a more moderate attitude, especially in economics; and the failure of Libyan foreign policy (in the case of Chad, for example). This second issue determined the marginal role played by Libya in the Arab world, although Qadhdhafi is periodically identified by the United States as a symbolic enemy to be crushed at all costs. The latter response is due to his more or less active support of international terrorism by such groups as the Irish Republican Army, the Basques, and radical Palestinian groups.
In 1977, Gaddafi transformed Libya into a new socialist state called the Jamahiriya (“state of the masses”). Officially he adopted a symbolic role in governance but remained head of both the military and the Revolutionary Committees responsible for policing and suppressing dissent. During the 1970s and 1980s, Libya’s unsuccessful border conflicts with Egypt and Chad, support for foreign militants, and alleged responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing left it increasingly isolated on the international stage. A particularly hostile relationship developed with the United States, United Kingdom, and Israel, resulting in the 1986 U.S. bombing of Libya and United Nations-imposed economic sanctions. From 1999, Gaddafi rejected Arab socialism and encouraged economic privatisation, rapprochement with Western nations, and Pan-Africanism; he was Chairperson of the African Union from 2009–10. Amid the 2011 Arab Spring, protests against widespread corruption and unemployment broke out in eastern Libya. The situation descended into civil war, in which NATO intervened militarily on the side of the anti-Gaddafist National Transitional Council (NTC). The government was overthrown and Gaddafi, who had retreated to Sirte, was captured and killed by NTC militants.
A highly divisive figure, Gaddafi dominated Libya’s politics for four decades and was the subject of a pervasive cult of personality. He was decorated with various awards and lauded for his anti-imperialist stance, his support for Arab and then African unity, and for significant improvements that his government brought to the Libyan people’s quality of life. Conversely, domestically his social and economic reforms were strongly opposed by Islamic fundamentalists and he was internationally condemned as a dictator whose authoritarian administration violated the human rights of Libyan citizens and financed global terrorism.
Death and Turmoil
On October 20, 2011, Libyan officials announced that Muammar al-Qaddafi had died near his hometown of Sirte, Libya. Early reports had conflicting accounts of his death, with some stating that he had been killed in a gun battle and others claiming that he had been targeted by a NATO aerial attack. Video circulated of Qaddafi’s bloodied body being dragged around by fighters.
On the afternoon of Gaddafi’s death, NTC Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril publicly revealed the news. Gaddafi’s corpse was placed in the freezer of a local market alongside the corpses of Yunis Jabr and Mutassim; the bodies were publicly displayed for four days, with Libyans from all over the country coming to view them. In response to international calls, on 24 October Jibril announced that a commission would investigate Gaddafi’s death. On 25 October, the NTC announced that Gaddafi had been buried at an unidentified location in the desert. Seeking vengeance for the killing, Gaddafist sympathisers fatally wounded one of those who had captured Gaddafi, Omran Shaaban, near Bani Walid in September 2012.
For months, Qaddafi and his family had been at large, believed to be hiding in the western part of the country where they still had small pockets of support. As news of the former dictator’s death spread, Libyans poured into the streets, celebrating the what many hailed as the culmination of their revolution.
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