The process of developing utopian models begins by identifying the areas of social corruption, illnesses, and defections, as seen by every idealistic thinker. Next, each thinker develops his own responsive alternative model. This process can be well illustrated in the development of the “Republic”: In the first stage, Socrates has been well known in ancient Athens to be critical of his contemporary mainstream ideas, but he did not suggest alternative models to replace the already corrupted Athens. Hence, at the beginning, Socrates did not exceed the point of questioning and rebutting, through logical and rhetorical argument, the sophist ideas that prevailed in Athens back then. However, after a while he decided to take a further step to the next stage--after he had recognized the main social illnesses of Athens--and built his own theoretical model: the Kallipolis.
By the same token, relative to contemporary idealistic models, it is easy to notice that the most influential modern idealist philosophers and thinkers were stimulated by whatever inappropriate existed before their sight in the process of developing their own alternative models. In analogy with Socrates’ first stage, Oswald Spengler, motivated by his will to identify what he had considered as clear signs of an upcoming downfall of the modern western civilization in the twentieth century, wrote his famous book “The Decline of the West”. Furthermore, Karl Marx perfectly illustrates Socrates’ second stage: Not only did his “Communist Manifesto” stop at pointing out to the defects of his contemporary socio-economic and political systems; but also it went deeply into full descriptions of the suggested Marxist alternative model.
Henceforth, utopian theories that were developed since the death of Plato until the modern era were, to a great extent, inspired by “The Republic”. Contemporary idealistic ideologues representing a versatile spectrum of utopian schools have focused their main interest on identifying and responding to the threats facing the populations to which they belong. In addition, it has been observed in the vast majority of historical events, that utopian models are developed unconsciously as a reactive approach, and not an active one. Accordingly, the ideas of a very influential Middle-Eastern ideologue belonging to a contemporary school of utopian idealism shall be analyzed and contextualized in Plato’s utopian framework.
The ideologue in our consideration for this paper is Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), who was a prominent ideologue of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and whose book “Signposts on the Road” is considered by many to be the initiator of modern Islamized militant groups worldwide. To start this analysis, a general picture of the Middle East should be put into consideration, so as to be able to simulate the socio-political and economic situation of that particular region at the time when Qutb was formulating his thoughts.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Muslim world was torn by artificially-created boundaries into small fragments falling under western colonialism for long decades. Qutb was still young when the Islamic Ottoman Caliphate was announced defeated in WW I, before being officially ended in 1924, and replaced by a rigid secular pro-western Turkish-nationalist government. To many devoted Muslims worldwide, the downfall of the Islamic Caliphate for the first time over fourteen centuries represented an unforgettable painful memory. Moreover, the way the new totally-opposite regime led by Mustafakemal Atatürk was founded on the ruins of the Islamic Caliphate, was perceived by Qutb to be the worst fate for an institution that had always represented a sense of unity and pride to all Muslims worldwide.
From this standpoint, Qutb, as a devoted Muslim, began to identify the problems facing the Muslim world. He criticized the way many Egyptians and Muslims worldwide were influenced by some of the western socio-political and economical systems, as well as western lifestyle in general, at the expense of Islamic values and traditions. Qutb considered that the source of these social illnesses stemmed from two origins: First, the Muslim society had abandoned the fundamentals of Islam and ran in the pursuit of exported western laws, culture, ideas, and lifestyle. Second, Qutb found that the west was actually exercising a sort of cultural hampering over the Muslim world, whose the most important result was the establishment of a secular-nationalist regime in the place of the historical Caliphate.
After Qutb had identified the sources of threat, he had to come up with solution in coordination with other people sharing his same concerns. Paralleling Qutb, the Muslim Brotherhood movement was founded in 1928 by Hassan Al-Banna, as a reaction against the termination of the Islamic Caliphate in 1924. Qutb found it to be the most powerful social reformist movement in Egypt calling for the re-establishment of a Pan-Islamic social, political, and economic unity. Hence, he decided to join the Muslim Brothers, and later became one of their prominent thinkers.
In 1948, the Muslim Brotherhood trained and sent volunteers to Palestine to fight against the newborn Jewish state. The King Farouk of Egypt began to express his concerns regarding the growing numbers of armed and trained Muslim Brothers coming back from the front lines after all military operations would end. Therefore, Farouk withdrew the Muslim Brotherhood troops from the battlefronts in Palestine, alleged them of planning for an armed coup-d’état, and sent them to military prisons. Later in 1948, Hassan Al-Banna, the General Murshid and the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood was assassinated by the King’s secret police, and the war in Palestine ended with a shameful Arab defeat against the state of Israel. Qutb was carefully following these news while taking part in a scholarship student program at Colorado State College of Education, in the town of Greeley, between 1948 and 1950.
Added to the enemy that Qutb saw in the King Farouk and other pro-western governments in the Middle East, the new Israeli enemy created in the heart of the Muslim world ascertained his views about the menacing threats that would await the Muslim world if its inhabitants were not willing to react on the same level of the danger. Furthermore, Qutb’s writings during his sojourn in Colorado reflected to a deep extent his concerns about the lack of morality, spirituality, and social integrity –in his point of view- that characterized western society, as he illustrated in his book “The America I Have Seen”. Qutb was struck by the materialistic mainstream views in the west that were embraced by the educated elite. He criticized severely the philosophy of Heidegger, Marx, Freud, and others, and considered them to be the cause behind the social corruption in the west.
However, Qutb mentioned his admiration of the level at which westerners are serious and punctual in doing their jobs, compared to Egyptians, and he even explicitly expressed his desire to establish a scientific and technological progress in the Middle East, following the western model. Qutb always touched upon his allegiance to Islamic fundamentalism which he considered to be his own utopian model, as seen in his book “Islam and Social Justice”. In fact, it is interesting to draw the word “social justice” form the latter book title, and put it in the context of Platonic justice.
At this particular stage, Qutb’s role ideal model, or end, had been formulated: A pan-Islamic unity that functioned on all domains in conformity with his own perception of Islam, aided by scientific and technological advance, even if the latter came to be originally from the west. At this point, nothing seemed really radical in Qutb’s analogy. His radical views, however, appeared at the moment he began to think of suitable means to reach his end. Consequently, and in a superposed harmony with Plato, the means adopted by Qutb to strive for his utopia were of very critical nature, and of very influential outcome. He introduced the principle of legitimizing the armed struggle against global jahiliyya that is represented by the corrupt government, and the corrupt west.
In 1952, the Free Officers seized power in Egypt, after a successful coup d’état against the King Farouk, backed from the back lines by the organized structure of the Muslim Brotherhood. Between 1952 and 1954, high-tone negotiations took place between the Muslim Brothers and the Free Officers over the implementation of Islamic Shari’ah in Egypt, and the consequences were grave. In 1954, influenced by Qutb’s ideas, a young member of the Muslim Brotherhood fired three bullets towards President Gamal Abdel-Nasser in a public speech in Alexandria. This incident led Nasser to carry out mass-arrests against the Brotherhood, including Qutb, who was given a special doze of brutal torture and humiliation in Al-Marj detention camp. The period that Qutb spent in jail, and the quality of treatment he was subjected to, were of a great impact on his writings. A remarkable difference in Qutb’s dialectical tone could be seen by comparing his pre-prison writings to other works he formulated during and after his detention in Nasser’s camps. Qutb’s writings were believed by many analysts to have been put into direct influence of his horrific experience in Al-Marj detention camp, to the point that some prefer these writings to be classified as mere prison-literature driven and motivated by a feeling of frustration and a vigorous desire to revenge from, not only Nasser’s regime, but also the whole society whose response to his tragedy was unsatisfactory in his point of view. In prison, Qutb composed many works describing the suffering of political detainees in Nasser’s secret prisons, such as “The Holders of Burned Coal”, and the masterpiece ideological reference to all modern Islamized militant groups: “Signposts on the Road”.
The Platonic influence on Qutb’s ideas manifests itself most brightly in his “Signposts on the Road”. Plato founded the justice principle in his “Republic” on the principle of specialization, meaning that each member of the society should only perform the job he/she is suited to. Consequently, Plato proceeded his argument by specifying that the best suited to rule in his Kallipolis (The Philosopher-King) should the only ones who rule, and nobody else. If we consider that the role of the Philosopher-King in the Platonic model is to lead its citizens to the light of truth and justice outside of the cave with its fake illusive shadows, then by the same token, we can see that Qutb divided his ideal society into an educated vanguard, added to ordinary masses. He further assigned to the vanguard the duty of leading the masses out of the cave of corruption and jahiliyya towards the light of Islam.
Nevertheless, Qutb in his 30-volumes work “In the Shade of the Qur’an” goes into deep details regarding the ideal model for good child rearing as to reinforce, preserve, and sustain his utopian system, provided that it would be acquirable in the near future. It was actually Plato who specified very detailed codes for good child upbringing methods in the Kallipolis, as a means to maintain the status quo of his ideal city as soon as it would be achievable.
In the mid 1960s, after Qutb had ended his imprisonment duration, he worked in undercover with the banned Muslim Brotherhood movement to apply the means he had set forth in “Signposts on the Road” in order to practically achieve his utopian end. Qutb was again arrested, but this time under serious allegations of taking direct part in planning to bomb and sabotage a variety of vital structures in Egypt, such as some bridges on the Nile in Cairo, and the Delta Barrages. Following these events, Qutb was finally trialed and hanged by Nasser’s regime in 1966.
It is crucial to note that initial utopian intentions of both Plato and Qutb were essentially about establishing a virtuous society instead of an actually-existing corrupt situation, based on some noble principles, whether justice in the case of Plato, or Islam as seen by Qutb. Not only did the means both thinkers suggested for the attainment of their promised utopias come to be of hardcore radical nature, but also they influenced to a considerable level the ideas of the following generations. Moreover, it has turned out by putting the means each of Socrates and Qutb established for pursuing their ideal models, that if such models are to be theoretically attainable, they would result in a system where justice is the advantage of the stronger party that can reach the decision-making chair and sustain it by every permissible or impermissible means.
Furthermore, by putting into a comparison the execution of Qutb with that of Socrates, the initial ideologue of the “Republic”, important deductions may emerge. While sophism represented to Socrates the ultimate synonym of ignorance and injustice, and while secularism and westernization represented the ultimate evil to Qutb, the ideas of both ideologues were considered by their contemporary decision-makers to be radical and against all well-established customs. Furthermore, while the immediate fate of both thinkers was execution, the response of the following generations to their tragic way in which they had died ranged from admiration and inspiration to sentiments that they deserved such an outcome. At the end, the ideas of Plato and Qutb have continued to have a great impact, whether positive of negative, on the following generations.
By the same method in which the Platonic “Republic” has been always taken into account for quite a number of contemporary utopian thinkers, including Qutb himself, the writings of the latter and his thoughts have been considered to be the main idiom guiding the behavior of all militant Islamized groups, including Al-Qaeda for example. In accordance, the defeat of Nasser in 1967 by Israel represented a crucial turning point in the Middle East, since, not only did it mark the failure of Arab nationalism and Nasserite socialism, but also it opened the way to the other untried alternative: Islamized political movements.
To many fundamentalist Muslims, the big defeat of Nasser in 1967 was considered to be God’s punishment for his execution of Qutb. Furthermore, the death of Nasser and the rise of Anwar As-Sadat into power brought more freedom of operation to the Muslim Brotherhood. Sadat’s intention was to topple down the socialist tide in Egyptian universities by counterbalancing it with the Islamic tide, and he succeeded to a great extent in reaching his initial objective. Although Sadat was extremely lenient in dealing with the Islamic movements, the inflexion point that ended this honey moon was Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem in 1977, added to his 1979 Camp David unilateral peace treaty with Israel. To even other Arab governments, Sadat’s unilateral peace with Israel after 40 years of hostilities presented an overwhelming shock that led to a serious breach in the ties between Egypt and its Arab neighbors, to the extent that the official headquarters of the Arab League was transferred from Cairo to Tunis. Relatively, the reaction of Islamized groups to Sadat’s decisions was far off violent than that of Arab governments.
Numerous and serious debates took place inside the Muslim Brotherhood regarding the proper way to cope with such a corrupt government, as they saw it. Opinions inside the Islamic movement advocated two opposing methods to deal with Sadat. Some thought that there was no point of using violence, and that only long-term social reform is the best solution, while others advocated the use of armed struggle to change the current situation. The party favoring the latter opinion ended up splitting from the Muslim Brotherhood, and was extremely inspired by the successful Islamic Revolution of 1979 in Iran, while taking Qutb’s “Signposts on the Road” as their role guide for their armed struggle against the state of jahiliyya they had seen under Sadat’s regime.
The re-reading of Qutb resulted directly in the formation of the most dangerous Islamized militant organizations such as Takfir and Hijrah, Al-Jama’ah Al-Islamiyah, and Tanzim-ul-Jihad that succeeded finally in 1981 to assassinate the president Sadat himself. The combination between the unsettlement of the Palestinian case, the American exaggerated siding with Israel, and its support to Arab autocracies that have always exerted coercion and repression against the Islamic movements, has resulted in the revival of Qutb’s ideas, legitimizing the use of force to achieve the desired "happy" ending. It was this line of thinking that subsequently led to the existence of organizations like Al-Qaeda, as well as the so-called international terrorism.
In conclusion, it could be deduced that while both Plato and Qutb had similar objectives to establish in their ideal role theoretical models, the means they considered to be suitable for the achievement of their respective utopias turned their dreams into a frightening nightmare. While Plato’s “Republic” provided a useful guideline for totalitarian regimes, Qutb’s “Signposts on the Road” provided the working agenda for global militant Islamized groups. Even the assumption contending that the initial intentions of Plato and Qutb were of very virtuous and idealistic nature is a bit questionable. If we imagine that Plato’s or Qutb’s utopias came into existence, then it might be drawn from the “Republic” as well as “Signposts on the Road” that the overall atmosphere created by the rules, codes, and regulations would made these models to be nothing but rigid totalitarianships, founded on a justice that is the advantage of the stronger, and in which the best rules the worst, or the vanguard rule the masses.
Paradoxically, Plato fell into contradicting his anti-sophist notion of justice, by providing a model that would never work unless it would be founded on a justice that is the advantage of the stronger, just like what a vigorous sophist would have suggested. Furthermore, Qutb faithfully followed Plato’s footsteps, and even added a more violent contribution by setting forth methods that perfectly matched the notion by which the French revolutionaries tried to bring up their ideals of liberty, equity, and brotherhood on the edges of guillotines. Ironically, even the French Revolution itself fell into the same contradiction, when it resulted in a series of nightmares by the birth of the imperialist France and the Napoleonic wars.
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