On Islam

In this article, Qutb seems to be justifying the act of Jihaad, or striving to be a good Islamic follower. Qutb seems to be troubled by the current image Islamic Jihaad has. He acknowledges that today that image is a violent one; that those who seek Jihaad are violent and hostile. But Qutb argues the opposite: Jihaad and the Islamic religion is one that promotes freedom and respect for all beliefs, so long as all believe in God. Any Islamic fighting, according to Qutb, should be in the pursuit of freedom from any oppressive force. Men who claim to be authorities that we follow stay us from religion; stray us from God. So God must be instated as the supreme ruler, so all other forms of power must be done away with. Jihaad is not just a movement of belief, but one of action, says Qutb. Qutb thinks its practical to remove all forms of government to instate God as ruler. But is this really practical? It is hard to determine, because for those who believe in God, it is really hard to see how much he actually influences our world, and those who don't will not agree to letting something that doesn't exist take control. Also, our governments today really do a lot to protect us from harm, so is it practical to remove such a valuable resource? The best way to look at it is this way: what would happen if tomorrow, all government in our world was done away with? I'm sure the outcome would be pretty bad. The problem is a lot of people don't believe in God or Islam, and would not simply abide to Jihaad. But Qutb does show that the idea of total freedom is a nice one. The one thing he does by showing that Jihaad is freedom-loving is show that Jihaad is not a bad thing. In a sense, Jihaad embraces liberalism, and the idea of equality of beliefs should be defended. But Qutb falls short by thinking total eradication of government is where we should head next.