Islamic radical political thought and the struggle for a righteous society: sayyid Quṭb’s Al-ʿadāla al-iǧtimāʿiyya fīʾl-Islām (social justice in Islam)

This paper aims to analyze Sayyid Quṭb’s (1906-1966) contribution to the ideological and political debate in Egypt at the beginning of the 1950s. Quṭb’s political thought is generally described, by those who consider him only the mentor of international jihadism, as characterized initially by a phase of nationalistic commitment and then by his conversion to extremist, fanatical and violent Islamism. The analysis will focus on his essay Al-‘adāla al-iǧtimā‘yyia fī’l Islām (1949), and its enormous resonance among Egyptian intellectuals, not only linked to Muslim Brotherhood (Mitchell 1969; Shepard, 1996). Although Quṭb is much better known for the works written after the conversion to the Muslim Brotherhood and during his imprisonment in Tura jail (such as his Ma‘ālim fī’l-ṭarīq (1964) and his ponderous Quranic commentary Fī Zilāl al-Qur‘ān (1952, 1st vol.), Al-‘adāla al-iǧtimā‘yyia fī’l Islām is very interesting for better understanding his political and social thinking. In fact, this very strong denunciation of economic and social inequalities in Egypt represents Quṭb's previous analytical elaboration about social issues, in which he proposes his Islamic vision aimed at achieving three important goals: absolute freedom of conscience, complete equality of human beings and firm social solidarity. We aim to investigate if Quṭb’s elaboration could be considered an example of radical political thought (Carrè, 1984; Khatab 2006; Sabaseviciute 2019), an example of those “counter-hegemonic articulations” inside the lively political debate of that period (Kepel, 1984; Fawwaz, 2018). Secondly, at the same time, we want to propose a less dichotomous vision of the Egyptian political debate in those years, throwing new light on the intersections and overlaps among different currents of thought.