"Sayyid Qutb had no knowledge of the fundamental or subsidiary matters of Islam."

- Shaykh Muhammad Naasir ad-Deen al-Albaanee

Sayyid Qutb (1906-66) was born in a small town in Upper Egypt and moved to Cairo as an adolescent in order to further his education.

Qutb began to write in the late 1920s as a poet and literary critic, writing about social and political matters from a secular standpoint. By 1948, Qutb changed his mode of writing, and began to write from a more Islamic perspective, according to the limited knowledge of Islam that he had. Social Justice, his first Islamic book, was published in 1949.

After his return from a two-year study tour in the United States that ended in 1950, Qutb joined al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun (the Muslim Brotherhood), becoming one of their leading spokesmen. After the movement openly opposed the government of Jamal Abdul Nasser, Qutb essentially spent the rest of his life in prison after 1954, except for a brief period in 1964-65. After being temporarily released, Qutb was re-apprehended, tried and executed for treason in 1966.

Qutb's lack of knowledge in Islam coupled by his jailing led him to change his understanding of Islam according to the circumstances he was faced with. Consequently, his writings became more and more radical as time went by. Eventually, his revolutionary ideology of takfir (excommunication) and setting out against the authorities became ingrained in the minds and hearts of a new generation of youth who were looking for something greater than the failed way of al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun. To this day, Qutb is considered to be the head of this ideology for all insurrectionary groups.

His new-fangled way of understanding Islam is evident in his attempt to write a tafsir (explanation) of the Quran called Fi Thilalil-Quran (In the Shade of the Quran). Qutb was not interested in following the traditional approach of explaining the Quran, which is to firstly refer to the Quran itself for other verses which clarify the meaning, then the Haadeeths of the Prophet (may Allah raise his rank and grant him peace) which deal with the meanings of specific verses, or if this does not exist, to refer to the explanations of his companions. Hence, it cannot be referred to as a tafsir in the conventional sense.

Referring to the explanations of the companions is a legislated matter in Islam, because they witnessed the revelation of the Quran and were taught its understanding and application by the one to whom it was revealed. Consequently, they were commissioned to transmit the texts of the Quran and Haadeeths that we read today and were also charged with the responsibility of retaining the explanations of the texts as well as their causes and occasions of revelation. Instead of referring to these important sources, Qutb used his own opinions to explain the Quran - over and above these sources. Consequently, this tafsir contains numerous errors which the Salafi scholars have already clarified for the people.

Because of his ignorance of the orthodox system of Islamic belief, Qutb came up with a hodgepodge of statements collected from all of the various Islamic sects which have sprung up since the earliest years of Islamic civilization. Far from being upon the creed of the "Wahhabis", Qutb was influenced by the Mu'tazili/Sufi philosophical school of thought which prevails in that area of the Middle East. This system of belief runs completely contrary to the so-called "Wahhabi" creed.

Since he abandoned the methodology of returning to the understanding of the Prophet (may Allah raise his rank and grant him peace) and his companions when approaching the texts of the Quran and Sunnah, Qutb became engrossed in the faults and sins of those around him, particularly those of the rulers.

As the Islamic groups such as al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun sought to usurp the authority of the Egyptian rulers, the government responded by clamping down on them, sometimes in brutal ways. This environment caused Qutb to form a particular outlook of the world, and his absence of proper grounding in the methodology of the early rightly-guided Muslims caused him to fall into the dangerous orientation of expelling people from the fold of Islam due to their sins...