A Child From the Village

Qutb's first major work, a book which does not reflect his later radical Islamic theory, gives the reader a feeling bewilderment at times due to the nature of beliefs held by the people of the author's village.

I read Qutb's first work with a preconceived notion of what I would find; the indications or childhood experiences that might mark off the point at which Qutb found his calling to become the father of radical Islam. However, the book contains very little of these indicators, and barely touches on the idea of religion at all, except a small exerpt about how the public school was better than the Qur'anic school. What one finds in the book instead is a fairly simplistic, often times disjointed recount of a personal childhood. Qutb focuses on several strange memories from his childhood: a scene in which he and his schoolmaster capture an "ifrit" rabbit, a brief memory of a girl whom he found extremely attractive though he never spoke to her, an account of how his town put out fires. Though these memories are personally significant to the author, the reader is left at times feeling lost in the significance of the stories told.

Other parts of the book however are highly self reflective; Qutb allows us a unique perspective on his relationship with his mother and father. It also gives the reader a sense of how Qutb lived his childhood. Many of his stories show a shy young man, who is content in his books and inspired to learn. As will be discussed in the next post, one of the most interesting aspects of Qutb's life is how he feared the teachers of the Qur'an in his village, but was inspired to memorize the Qur'an, to beat the boys of the kuttab.

Next post on 1/24/2009

John