The Journal of Political Thought in Islam

The Journal of Political Thought in Islam

Resistance in the Mirror of the West: The Methodological Dependency of Fardid and Sayyid Qutb's Discourse on Modern Western Episteme

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
Mohammadreza Salehi Vasigh 1
Seyed Mahdi SadatiNejad 2
1 PhD student in Political Thought, Faculty of Law and Political Science, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.
2 Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Faculty of Law and Political Science, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.
10.22034/jpti.2025.544501.1446
Abstract
resistance discourses of Fardid and Sayyid Qutb, despite their apparently critical and anti-Western stance, demonstrate a fundamental contradiction in that they have failed to present an authentic opposition to the West. This research, drawing upon the theoretical framework of "inverted Occidentalism," analyzes these two discourses and demonstrates how these thinkers were profoundly influenced by the very intellectual categories they claimed to combat. The methodology is based on critical analysis and comparative examination of epistemological structures in the works of these two thinkers. The findings reveal that Qutb, despite his harsh criticisms of the West, adopted a modernist and hegemonic approach against the West in reconstructing concepts such as jahiliyyah (ignorance), hakimiyyah (sovereignty), and aqidah (creed). This methodology was borrowed from Western colonialism and, instead of originating from within Islamic tradition, engaged in redefining ancient Islamic concepts in an entirely modernist manner. Fardid, through proposing the concept of Gharbzadagi (Westoxication) and critiquing technology, employed the very Western philosophical frameworks that he was supposed to critique. The concept of ta'sil (authentication) versus tahsil (acquisition) that Fardid proposed was itself derived from modern dualities rather than from Islamic epistemology. The results demonstrate that these two thinkers produced a form of intellectual-cultural hegemony in the Islamic world that was fundamentally borrowed from the West. Instead of producing a genuine alternative, a new form of conservatism and fanaticism proliferated in the Islamic world, and both thinkers fell into the trap of Orientalism and Occidentalism, failing to create authentic consciousness for Islamic societies. Rather, they reproduced the same methodological violence and ideological perspective of the West.
Keywords
Westoxication
modern jahiliyyah
modernism
inverted Occidentalism
the West

Subjects

 
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