Reflections on Milestones

 I had been looking forward to reading Sayyid Qutb's Milestones since learning about its importance to so much of the Muslim world last semester in our History of the Modern Middle East class, but I was not aware of how it would effect my perception of the religion. The book's message is interesting to me because of the different ways in which it has been used, interpreted and banned throughout the past century. In a class like Islam, Modernity and Globalization, I think it's important to view a text's relevance to subject not only in terms of its message and applicability, but also in its global reach. Those who view Islam as a civilization or a cultural phenomenon limited to a certain space of the globe, as Rossa discusses, do not do justice to the issues Qutb chooses to focus on.

As a Peace and Global Studies major, what interests me most in the intersection of Islam and "modernity" is the influence of global capitalism within the Islamic sphere. I'm writing my paper on Islam as a challenge to global capitalism in part because of Qutb, whose slim volume details the reasons and methods for a challenge to global capitalism, although maybe not in those words.

He begins with, “Mankind today is on the brink of a precipice, not because of the danger of complete annihilation which is hanging over its head—this being just a symptom and not the real disease—but because humanity is devoid of those vital values which are necessary not only for its healthy development but also for its really progress.” The vital values that he thinks Western civilization lacks are obvious to everyone he says, in that the Western world has been unable to provide values that justify its existence or its conscience. He provides an adaptive Muslim society as a model for change, keeping the benefits of modern technology but also fulfilling basic human needs through a faith-based way of life.


As many people, especially in the US, think that there are already Muslim societies, and fear what they seem to be, Qutb's assertion that even what we think are Islamic civilizations are Jahiliya presents an interesting argument. “Our whole environment, people’s beliefs and ideas, habits and art, rules and laws—is Jahiliyyah, even to the extent that what we consider to be Islamic culture, Islamic sources, Islamic philosophy and Islamic thought are also constructs of Jahiliyyah!” This is what I intend to explore in my paper.