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SAYYID QUTB AND THE CRISIS OF CULTURE IN LATE 1940S EGYPT

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2018

Giedre Sabaseviciute
Giedre Sabaseviciute*
Affiliation:
Giedre Sabaseviciute is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Oriental Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic; e-mail: saba@orient.cas.cz
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Abstract

This article focuses on the writings and literary networks of the Egyptian intellectual and activist Sayyid Qutb during the late 1940s. Scholars have tended to explain Qutb's political radicalization and joining of the Muslim Brotherhood during the subsequent decade via aspects of his personality or personal life, such as his quick temper, conservatism, or frustration over unfulfilled aspirations to become a writer. Drawing on three periodicals published respectively by leftist, Islamist, and independent aspiring writers, I instead place Qutb's criticism of political, economic, and cultural elites in the context of an emerging generation of critical intellectuals. By shedding light on intellectual cooperation between Qutb, Muslim Brothers, Marxists, and independent writers, this article challenges established scholarly narratives that locate the Islamist project outside the Egyptian intellectual field.

Keywords

EgypthistoryintellectualsIslamismliterature
Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , February 2018 , pp. 85 - 101
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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References

NOTES

Author's note: I am thankful to the anonymous reviewers and the IJMES editors, whose comments pushed this article forward.

1 Muhammad Farid ʿAbd al-Khaliq, “Tahta Mijhar,” Majallat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin, no. 3, 9 January 1945.

2 Ahmad Rushdi Salih, “al-Atyaf al-Arbaʿa,” al-Fajr al-Jadid, no. 1, 16 May 1945.

3 The thesis that Qutb attacked senior literati out of frustration over his lack of literary success is defended by ʿAli Shalash in al-Tamarrud ʿala al-Adab: Dirasa fi Tajribat Sayyid Qutb (Beirut: Dar al-Shuruq, 1994). John Calvert ascribes Qutb's attacks on the entertainment industry to his conservative background, and explains his life shifts with reference to his emotional states; Calvert, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism (London: Hurst and Company, 2010), 109 and 110, respectively.

4 Klemm, Verena, “Different Notions of Commitment (iltizam) and Committed Literature (al-adab al-multazim) in the Literary Circles of the Mashriq,” Middle Eastern Literatures 3 (2000): 51–62 Google Scholar; Di-Capua, Yoav, “The Intellectual Revolt of the 1950s and ‘The Fall of the Udabāʾ,’” in Commitment and Beyond: Reflections on/of the Political in Arabic Literature since the 1940s, ed. Pannewick, Friederike and Khalil, Georges (Wiesbaden: Ludwing Reichert, 2015), 89–104 Google Scholar; Capua, Di “Arab Existentialism: An Invisible Chapter in the Intellectual History of Decolonization,” American Historical Review 117 (2012): 1061–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 The chief editor was Mudarrak Sawi, while Qutb is listed as “participating in the edition.”

6 Di-Capua, “The fall of the Udabāʾ.”

7 Paul-Sartre, Jean, Qu'est-ce que la littérature? (Paris: Gallimard, 1964 [1948])Google Scholar.

8 Ryzova, Lucie, The Age of the Efendiyya: Passages to Modernity in National-Colonial Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 250–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For more on the rise of revolutionary rhetoric in postwar Egypt, see Gordon, Joel, Nasser's Blessed Movement: Egypt's Free Officers and the July Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1992), 18–20 Google Scholar; and al-Bishri, Tariq, al-Haraka al-Siyasiyya fi Misr (1945–1953) (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 2002)Google Scholar.

9 Klemm, “Different Notions of Commitment,” 51.

10 Shakry, Omnia El, “The Vexed Archives of Decolonization in the Middle East,” American Historical Review 120 (2015): 920–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Calvert, Sayyid Qutb, 157–97. The biographic literature on Qutb is vast. In addition to the aforementioned biographies by Calvert and Shalash, see Toth, James, Sayyid Qutb: The Life and Legacy of a Radical Islamic Intellectual (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Musallam, Adnan, From Secularism to Jihad: Sayyid Qutb and the Foundations of Radical Islamism (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2005)Google Scholar; al-Namnam, Hilmi, Sayyid Qutb: Sirat al-Tahawwulat (Cairo: al-Karma li-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawziʿ, 2014)Google Scholar; Yunis, Sherif, Sayyid Qutb wa-l-Usuliya al-Islamiyya (Cairo: Dar Tayba li-l-Dirasa wa-l-Nashr, 1995)Google Scholar; and al-Khalidi, ʿAbd al-Fatah, Sayyid Qutb: Min al-Milad ila al-Istishhad (Damascus: Dar al-Qalam, 2007)Google Scholar.

12 The trope of Qutb's “turn” appears in most of his recent biographies and is explicitly referred to in their titles. Scholars differ somewhat on the orientation from which Qutb had purportedly “departed,” identified alternatively as “secularism” (Toth, Sayyid Qutb, 36–55); “Muslim secularism” (Musallam, From Secularism, 50); “secular nationalism” (Calvert, Sayyid Qutb, 126–27); “romanticism” (Younis, Sayyid Qutb, 11); and “literature” (Shalash, al-Tamarrud; al-Khalidi, Sayyid Qutb, 13). All of these orientations, including “Muslim secularism,” are understood to be essentially opposed to Islamism. The inclusion of literature among them is not surprising given the close connection that prevailing narratives of the origins of modern Arab literature draw between literature and the rise of secularism. See Allan, Michael, In the Shadow of World Literature: Sites of Reading in Colonial Egypt (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2016), 5–12 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Musallam justified his use of the term “Muslim secularist” to describe Qutb by claiming that Qutb had inner faith while not being “religiously oriented”; Musallam, From Secularism, 50. Other biographers of Qutb did not specify what they meant by “secularism.” Toth seems to have used this term in a very broad sense, even defining Qutb's parents as secular (Toth, Sayyid Qutb, 12).

14 Angela Giordani, “To be an Adib: Sayyid Qutb's Intellectual Biography Reconsidered” (MA thesis, Columbia University, 2014).

15 Klemm, “Different Notions of Commitment,” 52.

16 al-ʿAqqad, ʿAbbas Mahmud, Saʿat bayna al-Kutub (Cairo: Matbaʿat al-Muqtataf wa-l-Muqattam, 1929), 121–25Google Scholar.

17 See, for example, “al-Suʾal li-Taha Husayn,” al-Fikr al-Jadid, no. 8, 26 February 1948; “Lahazat maʿ Tawfiq al-Hakim,” al-Fikr al-Jadid, no. 2, 8 January 1948; “Radd ʿala al-Mazni,” al-Fajr al-Jadid, no. 8, 1 September 1945, “Radd ʿala al-ʿAqqad,” al-Fajr al-Jadid, no. 10, 1 October 1945; “Radd ʿala al-Ustadh Ahmad Amin,” al-ʿAlam al-ʿArabi, no. 2, 10 May 1947.

18 See, for example, ʿAli al-Katib, “Mulahazat ʿala Bahth al-Duktur Taha Husayn,” al-Fajr al-Jadid, no. 11, 15 October 1945.

19 “Taʿaqib li-Duktur Taha Husayn,” al-Fajr al-Jadid, no. 12, 1 November 1945.

20 Sayyid Qutb, “Milim al-Akbar: Bahth wa-Qissa,” al-Risala, no. 600, 1 January 1945.

21 The idea that European progress was due to the assimilation of Greek and Arab legacies was at the core of this argument, which was expressed even by conservative writers such as Mustafa Sadiq al-Rafiʿi. See al-Rafiʿi, Tahta Rayat al-Qurʾan: Maʿaraka bayna al-Qadim wa-l-Jadid (Beirut: al-Maktaba al-ʿAsriyya, 2002), 63.

22 Both trends have been described by Israel Gershoni and James P. Jankowski. On “national literature,” see Gershoni and Jankowski, Egypt, Islam and the Arabs: The Search for Egyptian Nationhood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), esp. 191–229. On “Easternism,” see ibid., 255–69; and Gershoni and Jankowski, Redefining the Egyptian Nation, 1930–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 35–96.

23 Omnia El Shakry has shown the extent to which nascent social sciences in interwar Egypt, including geography and anthropology, were dominated by the idea that cultural homogeneity was essential for mutual understanding and cooperation between peoples. Shakry, El, The Great Social Laboratory: Subjects of Knowledge in Colonial and Postcolonial Egypt (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2007), 55–86 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Qutb, Sayyid, Kutub wa-Shakhshiyyat (Beirut: Dar al-Shuruq, 1983), 159 Google Scholar.

25 On the place of al-Fajr al-Jadid in the Egyptian Left, see Joel Beinin, “Le marxisme égyptien (1936–52): nationalisme, anti-impérialisme et réforme sociale,” Cahiers d'histoirre. Revue d'histoire critique 105–6 (2008): 129–43; and Meijer, Roel, The Quest for Modernity: Secular Liberal and Left-Wing Political Thought in Egypt (1945–1948) (London: Routledge/Curzon, 2002), 104–6Google Scholar.

26 Ahmad Rushdi Salih, “Marhala Jadida fi al-Fikr al-Misri,” al-Fajr al-Jadid, no. 2, 1 June 1945.

27 On the Muslim Brotherhood's attitude toward poetry and theater, see Talima, ʿIssam, Hasan al-Banna wa-Tajribat al-Fann (Cairo: Maktabat Wahba, 2008)Google Scholar.

28 Muhibb al-Din al-Khatib, “al-Istiʿmar al-Fikri fi al-Sharq,” al-Fath, no. 181, 9 January 1930. Al-Khatib's Salafiyya Bookstore and Publishing House was a central meeting place for intellectuals and associations of Islamic sensibilities in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1927 al-Khatib took part in the creation of the Young Men's Muslim Association (Jamaʿiyya al-Shubban al-Muslimin), and in 1933 he provided support to the Muslim Brotherhood by printing its first journal.

29 In the 1960s, al-Jundi contributed articles to Nasserist intellectual periodicals such as al-Majalla (1957–71). In the 1970s and 1980s, he produced a volume of Taha Husayn's writings, portraying him as central to the Westernization of Egyptian culture. On al-Jundi's contributions to Islamist discourse of the 1970s, see Ismail, Salwa, Rethinking Islamist Politics: Culture, the State and Islamism (London: I.B.Tauris, 2003), 34–57 Google Scholar. See also al-Qaʿud, Hilmi Muhammad, al-Zahid: Anwar al-Jundi: Hayatuhu, Adabuhu wa-Fikruhu (Cairo: Dar al-Bashir li-l-Thaqafa wa-l-ʿUlum, 2016)Google Scholar; and ʿAlaʾ Mamduh, “al-Ustadh Anwar al-Jundi. Qaʾid al-Katiba al-Islamiyya li-l-Muqawama al-Fikriyya,” IkhwanWiki, accessed 10 November 2016, http://bit.ly/2wskCdi.

30 Anwar al-Jundi, “Kayfa Naktub al-Taʾrikh al-Islami?,” Majallat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin, 6 March 1948.

31 See his series of articles entitled “al-Marahil al-Thalatha: al-Ighfaʾ, al-Taghrib, al-Yaqaza,” Majallat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin, 1–29 April 1948.

32 Sayyid Qutb, “Maʿaraka al-Damir al-Adabi: Shubban wa-Shuyukh,” al-ʿAlam al-ʿArabi, no. 5, April 1947.

33 Musallam, From Secularism, 95; Calvert, Sayyid Qutb, 125–26; Toth, Sayyid Qutb, 56–58; Giordani, “To Be an Adib,” 31–32.

34 The note published in the Muslim Brotherhood's journal challenges James Heyworth-Dune's assertion that al-Fikr al-Jadid and the Brotherhood were competitors in the Islamic publishing market. According to Heyworth-Dune, the Muslim Brotherhood boycotted the journal, thus contributing to its closure. Subsequent accounts include Musallam, From Secularism to Jihad, 94–95, and Calvert, Sayyid Qutb, 126. For the published note, see Majallat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin, 22 February 1948.

35 The identification of al-Minyawi as a “war profiteer” was made by his former business partner Saʿid al-Sahhar. According to the latter, al-Minyawi started his career in the printing business as an employee in ʿIssa and Mustafa Halabi's printing house. During World War II al-Minyawi became one of the biggest paper suppliers in the country; al-Sahhar, Saʿid, Mawaqif fi Hayati (Cairo: Maktaba Misr, 1991), 138– 45Google Scholar.

36 Ashraf ʿId al-ʿAntabli, “al-Hajj Muhammad Hilmi al-Minyawi Rajul al-ʿAmal al-Daʿiyya,” IkhwanWiki, accessed 10 November 2016, http://bit.ly/2hftpor. The Consultative Assembly (al-Hayʾa al-Taʾassisiyya) is a decision-making body within the Muslim Brotherhood elected by direct vote among the group's members.

37 The Muslim Brotherhood was unsuccessful in maintaining hold of its publications; its outlets were regularly shut down, and members with the license to publish them were ousted or departed from the organization. This was true of the following periodicals: Jaridat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin (1933); al-Nadhir (The Warning, 1938–39); and al-Daʿwa (The Call, 1951–53). Until 1946 the Brotherhood had only weekly news magazines, and no dailies.

38 Kamil, ʿAdil Ahmad, al-Nuqat Fawqa al-Huruf: al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin wa-l-Nizam al-Khass (Cairo: Zahra li-l-Aʿlam al-ʿArabi, 1987), 123 Google Scholar.

39 A disagreement over the editorial line of al-ʿAlam al-ʿArabi was the reason for Qutb's resignation from the journal; Yunis, Sayyid Qutb, 25.

40 This partnership eventually dissolved, leaving the publishing house exclusively in the hands of al-Minyawi. Saʿid al-Sahhar, Mawaqif, 138–45.

41 Al-Bayan Aladhi Aqarratuhu al-Hayʾa al-Taʾassisiyya li-l-Ikhwan al-Muslimin fi Ijtimaʿiha ghayr al-ʿAdi al-Muʿataqid bi-l-Markaz al-ʿAm fi al-Yawm al-Jumʿa 10 Min Dhi al-Qaʿada 1371/1 Ughustus 1952 (Cairo: Matabiʿ Dar al-Kitab al-ʿArabi, 1952).

42 The Brotherhood's use of Dar al-Kitab al-ʿArabi as a meeting space for its top officials was mentioned by the fourth guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, ʿUmar al-Tilmisani; see Qaʿud, Ibrahim, ʿUmar al-Tilmisani Shahidan ʿala al-ʿAsr: al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun fi Daʾira al-Haqiqa al-Ghaʾiba (Cairo: Dar al-Mukhtar al-Islami, 1985), 33 Google Scholar.

43 The closure of al-Fikr al-Jadid was followed by Qutb's one-and-a-half-year stay in the United States. After his return in August 1950, Qutb increasingly became part of the Brotherhood's intellectual networks. In 1951, he joined two of the Brotherhood's outlets, al-Daʿwa and al-Muslimun (The Muslims); in 1952, his two books, al-ʿIdala al-ijtimaʿiyya fi al-Islam and al-Maʿaraka bayna al-Islam wa al-Raʾsmaliyya were reprinted under the insignia of the Islamist organization, a sign of the incorporation of these texts into its official corpus. In 1953 Qutb officially became a member of the organization, and in 1954 he edited its new magazine, Majallat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin.

44 Musallam, Calvert, and Giordani include among al-Fikr al-Jadid’s team the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Najib Mahfuz. I was unable to locate Mahfuz's essays in the collection of al-Fikr al-Jadid preserved in the Egyptian National Library. However, Mahfuz did contribute to al-ʿAlam al-ʿArabi, which Qutb had previously edited.

45 See ʿAbd al-Munʿam Shumayyis' book in which he recommends Qutb's al-Maʿaraka bayna al-Islam wa-l-Raʾsmaliyya for “further reading”; Shumayyis, Suqut al-Qahira (Cairo: Dar al-Kitab al-ʿArabi, 1951), 141. See also the reviews of Qutb's books by al-Fikr al-Jadid’s associated writers: Ibrahim al-Waʾili, “Maʿarakat al-Islam wa-l-Raʾsmaliyya,” al-Risala, no. 921, 26 February 1951; and ʿAbbas Khidr, “al-Islam wa-l-Nizam al-ʿAlami,” al-Risala, no. 913, 1 January 1951.

46 Ibrahim al-Waʾili, “al-Rusafi baʿd ʿAm,” al-Fajr al-Jadid, no. 30, 17 April 1946.

47 These include ʿAbd al-Munʿam Shumayyis, ʿAbd al-Hamid al-Sahhar, and Qutb's brother and sister, Amina Qutb and Muhammad Qutb.

48 Muhammad Fayad, “al-Salam al-ʿAlami wa-l-Islam li-l-Katib al-Daʿiyya al-Ustadh Sayyid Qutb,” al-Risala, no. 952, 19 November 1951.

49 Ibrahim al-Waʾili, “Maʿarakat al-Islam.”

50 It is common knowledge that Qutb was the one who “discovered” Najib Mahfuz. Mahfuz was part of the Committee of Publication for University Graduates, a series launched by Maktabat Misr in 1943 to promote young writers, and Qutb regularly reviewed Mahfuz's novels in al-Risala between 1944 and 1946. In 1945 Qutb solicited Taha Husayn to publish or at least “write a word” on a manuscript by one of al-Fikr al-Jadid’s contributor's, ʿImad al-Din ʿAbd al-Hamid. The letter was reproduced in Akhbar al-Adab, no. 970, 26 February 2012, 17. In 1951, Qutb prefaced Shumayyis' book Suqut al-Qahira; Shumayyis, Suqut, 3.

51 Qutb, “Nahwa al-Mujtamʿ al-Nazif,” in Shumayyis, Suqut, 3.

52 Shalabi, Hilmi, Taʾrikh al-Idhaʿa al-Misriyya (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-ʿAmma li-l-Kitab, 1995), 172–73Google Scholar.

53 Armbrust, Walter, “The Golden Age before the Golden Age: Commercial Egyptian Cinema before the 1960s,” in Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond, ed. Armbrust, Walter (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2000), 301 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Ifdal El Saket, “Projecting Egypt: The Cinema and the Making of Colonial Modernity, 1896–1952” (PhD diss., University of Sydney, 2013), 327–28, 418–28.

55 Notably, the films labeled as socially committed included those produced by Husayn Sidqi.

56 Anwar al-Jundi, “Matbaʿa, Shasha wa-Midhiyaʿ,” Jaridat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin, 9 October 1948.

57 “Madha Tafaʿal bi-na al-Sinima,” al-Fajr al-Jadid, no. 21, 13 February 1948.

58 See, for instance, “al-Istiʿmar aladhi Yaqul: Hunna al-Qahira,” al-Fajr al-Jadid, no. 25, 13 March 1946.

59 “Iftah Radiyu Tajid al-Raʾsmaliyyin . . . (2),” al-Fajr al-Jadid, no. 27, 27 March 1946.

60 Sayyid Qutb, “Adab al-Inhilal,” al-Risala, no. 999, 25 August 1952. Qutb's attacks against popular songs date from the mid-1930s. See “al-Ghinaʾ al-Marid,” al-Ahram, 25 June 1934; and “al-Mutribun wa-l-Mutribat Humma al-Tabur al-Khamis fi Misr,” Sahifat Dar al-ʿUlum, no. 1, July 1940.

61 Al-Fikr al-Jadid, no. 7, 19 February 1948.

62 Subhi Shafiq, “Udabaʾuna al-Mutrifun,” al-Fikr al-Jadid, no. 8, 29 January 1948.

63 Founded in 1944 by brothers ʿAli and Mustafa Amin, Akhbar al-Yawm was one of the first news outlets to use techniques characteristic of yellow journalism.

64 “Akhbar,” al-Fajr al-Jadid, no. 40, 26 June 1946. Similar criticism of Akhbar al-Yawm was expressed by another leftist periodical, al-Jamahir (The Masses), no. 29, 16 October 1947.

65 Sayyid Qutb, “Afkhad wa-Nuhud,” al-Fikr al-Jadid, no. 5, 29 January 1948.

66 Al-Fikr al-Gadid, no. 8, 26 February 1948. See also Qutb's comment on al-Hakim's association with the commercial press in Sayyid Qutb, Kutub, 121n1.

67 Amin Takla, “Mulahazat ʿala al-Harakat al-Fikriyya fi Misr,” al-Fajr al-Jadid, no. 6, 1 August 1945.

68 Tensions between the periodical and al-ʿAqqad were exacerbated in 1945 when al-ʿAqqad published an overtly anti-Marxist book titled Fi Bayti (Cairo: Dar al-Maʿarif, 1945). For al-Fajr al-Jadid’s reactions to this book, see “Barid al-Fajr al-Jadid,” no. 36, 29 May 1946; “al-ʿAqqad Lam Yantahi!! Wa-l-ʿAqqad La Yuzal Yukhadir al-Shaʿb,” no. 39, 19 June 1946; and Muhammad Ismaʿil, “Fi Bayti: Naqd Kitab ʿAbbas al-ʿAqqad,” no. 8, 1 September 1945.

69 See, for instance, Ibn Khattab, “Hal Fashalat Wizarat al-Maʿarif fi Mahamatiha?,” al-Fikr al-Jadid, no. 2, 8 January 1948. These complaints should be viewed in the context of the institutional rivalry that existed between Dar al-ʿUlum and Cairo University, the former having been accused of resisting modernization. See Taha Husayn's criticism of Cairo University in Mustaqbal al-Thaqafa fi Misr (Cairo: Maktabat al-Maʿarif, 1969), 211–23. For his defense of Dar al-ʿUlum, see Naqd Mustaqbal al-Thaqafa fi Misr (Jedda: Dar al-Saʿudiyya, 1969), 65–66.

70 Russell, Mona, “Competing, Overlapping and Contradictory Agendas: Egyptian Education under British Occupation, 1882–1922,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 21 (2001): 51–54 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 “Al-Istiʿmar al-Thaqafi,” al-Fajr al-Jadid, no. 36, 29 May 1946.

72 See al-Fajr al-Jadid's reaction to the announcement by French authorities of its readiness to preserve its “cultural interests” in the Arab East: “Masalih Faransa al-Thaqafiyya fi Misr,” no. 13, 16 June 1945.

73 The concept of “repertoire,” posed by Charles Tilly, highlights the strategic dimension of social movements choosing certain tools and actions to reach particular goals; Tilly, Contentious Performance (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Tellingly, in 1953, one of the most emblematic “ivory tower intellectuals,” Tawfiq al-Hakim, was described as a “committed writer”; “al-Nashat al-Thaqafi fi al-ʿAlam al-ʿArabi: Misr,” al-Adab, vol. 1, February 1953, 72. Similarly, in the cinema industry, filmmakers who called for a ban on belly dancing scenes frequently included such scenes in their own films; El Saket, Projecting, 327–28.

74 Di-Capua, “Arab Existentialism.”

75 “Al-Nashat al-Thaqafi fi al-ʿAlam al-ʿArabi: Misr,” al-Adab, vol. 1, January 1953, 71.

76 “Hal Asaba al-Shiʿr al-ʿArabi bi-Naksa? Jawab al-Ustadh Sayyid Qutb,” al-Adab, no. 1, April 1953; Amina Qutb, “Awham,” al-Adab, no. 11, November 1953; “ʿId al-Suʾada,” no. 7, July 1953.

77 Amina Qutb's story was criticized by the renowned Lebanese translator Munir al-Baʿalbaki for portraying human life as an illusion and irony; al-Baʿalbaki, “Qaraʾtu al-ʿAdad al-Madi fi al-Adab,” al-Adab, no. 12, December 1953. Muhammad Qutb imputed this criticism to al-Adab’s hostility to Islam; Muhammad Qutb, “al-Fann wa-l-Mujtamʿ,” Majallat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin, no. 2, 27 May 1954.

78 Sayyid Qutb, “Manhaj al-Adab,” Majallat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin, no. 1, 20 May 1954. The article was republished in the posthumous collection of Qutb's articles, Fi al-Taʾrikh (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 2001), 11–21. The question of whether Qutb's Islamic approach to literature was the same or different from literatures produced in Muslim regions following the Qurʾanic revelation was discussed in the debate sparked by Qutb's article “Manhaj al-Adab.” That debate lasted until July 1954, and involved a number of journal columnists including ʿAbd al-Munʿam Shumayyis, Rashad Muhammad Khalil, and Qutb's younger brother, Muhammad. The latter continued to reflect on the Islamic method of literature in his book Manhaj al-Fann al-Islami (Cairo: Dar al-Qalam, 1963).

79 For a detailed description of the controversy, see Di Capua, “The Fall of the Udabāʾ.”

80 See Qutb's critique of Husayn's literature in al-Fikr al-Jadid, no. 3. 15 January 1948.

81 Qutb, “Manhaj al-Adab.”