Sayyid Qutb’s Evaluation of America

I was frankly surprised at the wisdom and astuteness of Qutb’s evaluation of the contradiction of genius and primitiveness in the American mind. Although several of the details of his analysis were certainly arguable (such as the motivations behind the Civil War and similar claims), his overarching claim appeared to me to be quite accurate. I will limit myself here to two substantial thoughts.

First:
I am impressed with the level of nuance that Qutb demonstrates in making his critique of American society. Even though his critique is quite evidently made from an Islamic perspective, he does not attempt to blame the faults of the country on its Christian foundations, nor does he attempt to claim that what he saw in the American churches was part of the natural state of Christianity. He attributes these things mainly to the circumstances surrounding the foundation of America: the rebellious, adventurous, or criminal psychological state of the first settlers accompanied by virgin land untouched by millennia of human settlement. He likewise points to the artificiality of the American project, having not been formed by the progression of humanity from natural worship to religion to art to science that occurred in the Old World. This, to Qutb, is what functions as the basis of the American psyche, with all of its worship of grandeur and innovation and its obsession with pleasures and gratification. The obsessions with sexual gratification and their inability to face death appears to stem from this reality as well.

It seems, then, that his critique of American civilization and culture could be just as easily leveled from the perspective of a Catholic as from a Muslim. Given the way he exposed his argument, I doubt that this would have been lost to Qutb. The philosophical nature of this critique could certainly be a point of common ground and purpose between Christians and Muslims in the United States.

Second:
It is particularly interesting to me that Qutb’s critique of American primitiveness of emotion and culture is a reversal of the typical narrative of Americans accusing people of the Old World as being primitive. His point is well-made. Those who are primitive are not those who live without modern comforts, but are rather those who live without regard for modesty, death, virtue, modesty, or self-control.