From Philosophy to Ideology

I am reading a couple books about Sayyid Qutb, I was particularly interested in his view of the moral state of America in 1948-50. He was a an anti-communist and there is a particularly telling passage that compares a statement by Billy Graham to one Qutb made a year prior denouncing communism as replacing one god for another. (This in and of it self means nothing, it is but an interesting comparison.)

Reading Sayyid's thoughts in his early days of transformation (he was 42 but this was his first adventure outside of Egypt) I cannot help but believe that the man was a paleoconservative in the truest sense. Of course he later developed into an ideologue and essentially developed his own dangerous ideology, Qutbism, but that was not the man in 1950.

I did a little Internet search and discovered that Joshua previously wrote about this man:

CORPUS MEUM today links to an article about Sayyid Qutb's stay in 1950s America: A Lesson In Hate. The Egyptian thinker was, of course, in grace error, but this did not prevent him from making a valid point or two along the way, like this one:

Qutb rejected the idea that “new” was also “improved.” The Enlightenment, the Industrial Age—modernity itself—were not progress. “The true value of every civilization...lies not in the tools man has invented or in how much power he wields,” Qutb wrote. “The value of civilizations lay in what universal truths and worldviews they have attained.” The modern obsession with science and invention was a moral regression to the primitive condition of the first toolmakers.

Such ideas seem to me not so much in keeping with Islamism but with the Traditionalist School of René Guénon.

Joshua may not have called the man a paleoconservative (in 1950 as I stated above) but he was on the right trail. I hate it when I think I have an original idea and then find someone else has beat me to it.

I am about to re-read Huntington's Clash of Civilizations. There is much I agree with in that book, although I believe he does not go far enough in sub-dividing potential cultures and potential clashes.

I am however stumped in my apparent agreement with Huntington in portions of his work and my understanding of Muslims. Huntington asserts that future conflict will not be primarily ideological or economic but based upon culture. I do not see non-ideological Muslims, living mostly in their lands as a threat.

Cultures can co-exist in the community of nations, it is ideology that poisons the mind of man. I could, for instance, have been friends with Sayyid Qutb in 1950, our views would have been the same (had I been alive). This is despite the fact that we come from different cultures and religious beliefs.

I would have been his enemy some years later after his philosophical views turned ideological. I have likely fought and killed people influenced by his ideas in Afghanistan or Iraq.