In the Shade of Qur'an

In the Shade of Qur'an

By Sayyid Qutb

Forward to ‘ In the Shade of the Qur'an’

By

Professor Muhammed Qutb

It gives me great pleasure to write this Forward to In the Shade of the Qur’an in its English version. The book is the fruit of the most productive years of its author’s intellectual life and, at that same time, a vivid expression of the sacred battle which he fought and which culminated in his martyrdom in 1966.

The larger part of this work was written when the author was in jail in the period 1954 -1964. This was a period of complete solitude, when writing was the main preoccupation of the author and during which he lived totally ‘in the shade of the Quran’.

The author’s vigorous struggle, for which he was imprisoned, then killed, was, at the practical level, an attempt to achieve the implementation of Islam in the shape of community which practises Islam in its life and preaches the need for its realization until it becomes the actual code of practice for the society as a whole. At the intellectual level, however, the author’s life struggle is embodied in a collection of books devoted to explaining the true nature of Islam, its fundamentals, values and laws. The largest and most important of these works is undoubtedly In the Shade of the Qur’an.

  

   The book is a ‘campaign of struggle’ because it is, indeed, much more than a commentary on the Qur’an.

   The Qur’an is the book of Islam. Hardly a generation has passed since the dawn of Islam without the appearance of one or more commentaries which explain the meaning of the Qur’an. Having spent a considerable part of his life ‘in the shade of Qura’n’and, having joined the struggle for the sake of Islam, the author of this work did not intend to write just another commentary. He had a different objective which he felt could be attained through writing his commentary.

   Our present age has its own features which, perhaps, have never existed in any period of history. They are the ones which gives this commentary its own colouring and determine its points of emphasis.

  

   Muslims, for their part, are now far removed in their practical life from the true nature of Islam. The image of Islam they present by their way of life is nothing more than the indistinguishable negative of the true image of  Islam as it was practiced by the early Islamic generations, who perfectly fulfilled God’s (Allaah’s) own description of them:

            “You are the best community that has ever been raised up for mankind: You enjoin the doing of what is right and forbid what is wrong, and you believe in God.” (3:110) Hence they were able to write that incomparable page in human history. They established truth and justice on earth and raised for mankind an inimitable civilization which builds up its structure in the material and spiritual worlds at the same time. It is a civilization which unites the two worlds and achieves harmony between body and soul, religion and politics, faith and science, the present life and the hereafter, the practical and the ideal.

   Non-Muslims, on the other hand, confront humanity which a host of philosophical, social, political and economic doctrines which banish religion from practical life. At best, such doctrines restrict religion to a tiny corner of man’s conscience so that it may become purely a relationship between the individual and his Lord that has no bearing whatsoever on society and its active life, or, at worst, fight it tooth and nail and bar its very existence. As a result, human life is full of many sorts of political, social, and economic injustice which know no limits. It witnesses various types of intellectual and moral perversion unknown in history. The advocates of such perversion and deviation try nevertheless to dress their erring ways in a scientific garment and they hold to them as if they were truth itself or the ideal sought after. This they do despite all that they suffer in consequence of nervous and psychological diseases – worry and restlessness, madness and suicide, alcoholism, drug addiction and crime.

   What is worse is that these deviant philosophical, social, political and economic doctrines now dominate the lives of contemporary Muslims, wearing the false disguise of a ‘modern’ human civilization. Thus they poison the lives of the Muslim peoples to a larger degree that they do the life of the West because the Muslims of today have deserted Islam and are unaware of its true nature and fundamental value.

   Hence the vigorous intellectual and practical ‘campaign of struggle’ to which the author devoted himself was an attempt to explain to contemporary Muslims the true nature of Islam. His driving objective was that the Muslims of today should be able to live and practice true Islam in the same way as the early Islamic generations. They would then rescue themselves and would be able to show all mankind the road to salvation.

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