Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
Sayed Khatab. The Political Thought of Sayyid Qutb: The Theory of Jahiliyyah. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. Pp. xiv + 254. ISBN 0-415-37596-7. Price: not given.
Sayyid Qub (1906-1966), an educationist by profession, is considered one of the main ideologues of the Islamic socio-political concepts and philosophy of the twentieth century. He was a prolific writer and a trenchant critic. His intellectual life spanned a period of more than 40 years (1921-1964) but most of his writings, with the exception of his remarkable book Social Justice in Islam, which made a visible impact on the Arab world in particular and Muslim world in general, appeared after his return from USA in 1950, and during the period of his imprisonment (1954-1966). One of the books that Qub wrote during his internments Ma'¬lim ... (Milestones) was highly impactful and is considered to be a major reason prompting the verdict of the Military Court for his execution.
Not much academic work has been done on Sayyid Qub's contribution to Islamic thought. Sayed Khatab, who is a researcher in the School of Political and Social Inquiry at Monash University, Australia, should be commended for having taken up the responsibility of introducing Sayyid Qub and his theory of J¬hiliyyah, through this book, to the English-speaking world.
According to Khatab, "Islam and jahiliyyah are the real binary opposites and the real struggle in...