“…Whenever I look to the effects of Ibn Taymiyyah and the effects of Sayyid Qutb on Earth, I come to realize the meaning of {“A good word is like good tree whose root is firmly fixed, and its branches reach to the sky, giving its fruit at all times by the Leave of its Lord…”} [Ibrahim; 24]
Ibn Taymiyyah died in prison in the year 726 H. His books were burned up, and he and Ibn al-Qayyim were paraded around the streets of Damascus with the neighborhood children mocking and clapping behind them. Ibn Taymiyyah would sometimes write in prison, so they took away his pen and paper. So, he began writing on the walls of his cell using a rock. This treatise of ‘al-Hamawiyyah’ or ‘at-Tadmuriyyah’ was copied down from the walls of his prison cell. Ibn Taymiyyah died in 726 H, and the the scholars who competed with him thought that they were finally rid of him. He died in 726 H, and after exactly four centuries, someone emerged in the belly of the Arabian Peninsula who loved the books of Ibn Taymiyyah and learned from them, and he was Shaykh Muhammad bin ‘Abd al-Wahhab. Muhammad bin ‘Abd al-Wahhab was expelled from ad-Dar’iyyah to here and there, to Iraq, etc. Afterwards, he returned, and Allah softened the heart of Muhammad bin Sa’ud towards him and he agreed to aid his mission, and he did so.
The whole world went crazy, and they moved Ibrahim Basha the son of Muhammad ‘Ali Basha, and a Syrio-Egyptian army moved to tear apart this da’wah and wipe it out from Najd, and they took its leader ‘Ubaydullah bin Sa’ud and imprisoned him. Afterwards, the people thought that this da’wah was finished. About fifty years ago, one of Muhammad bin Sa’ud’s sons, ‘Abd al-’Aziz, took over as leader. During the days of ‘Abd al-’Aziz, the people would wander from place to place until they could find just a tiny date to eat. One of the inhabitants of Najd told me: “One day during the famine, we would dig up ant hills and collect and eat the wheat that the ants would gather. We were unable to eat dates on a daily basis, and we’d have to eat the date one day, and suck on the seed of that date the next.”
They would also take the vines on which the dates grew and wash them. So, the people of Najd would all come with their containers and vessels to collect some of the wash of these date vines. Allah then Willed that petroleum would be discovered inside the Arabian Peninsula, and this country began printing the books of Ibn Taymiyyah – printing and distributing, printing and distributing – and not a single library in the world was left except that it contained Ibn Taymiyyah’s books. Today, if you wish to silence someone, you simply say ‘Ibn Taymiyyah said such and such,’ and the person is silenced: {“A good word is like good tree whose root is firmly fixed, and its branches reach to the sky, giving its fruit at all times by the Leave of its Lord…”}
Sayyid Qutb was the same way. He was executed in prison, not in the street. They executed him inside the prison in a dark room, and nobody knows where his grave is until now. His own family doesn’t know where he is buried. One of his old friends said to me: “If only we knew where his grave is so that we can visit him…” So, I said to him: “His Lord does, you don’t need to know.” The day that Sayyid was executed, six to eight thousand copies of ‘Fi Dhilal al-Qur’an’ were burned in the main streets, in other words 64,000 volumes of the book were burned. Anyone in Egypt who was found possessing any of Sayyid Qutb’s books – especially ‘Ma’alim fit-Tariq’ – was sentenced to ten years in prison. Sayyid’s books were treated like opium! They were actually like opium! They were warned against in the same way that marijuana was warned against.
When Sayyid Qutb was executed, the ‘Voice of the Arabs’ broadcast that he had been executed because he wanted to kill Umm Kulthum and destroy charitable organizations and the radio stations that broadcast the Qur’an, and because he had contacts with Western intelligence, that he was an American agent, a Western agent, etc. So, the announcer on the ‘Voice of the Arabs’ show, Ahmad Sa’id – I heard him myself, and may he go to Hell, and what an evil destination – would say regarding Sayyid Qutb: “To Hell, and what an evil destination.”
That generation began asking itself: ‘Who is this man who was executed? What is this book ‘Ma’alim fit-Tariq’ and this book ‘Fi Dhilal al-Qur’an’ that he was sentenced for?’ So, everyone began looking for these books to read them. This happened to the point that a failing Christian publishing company in Beirut was advised by other Christians: “If you want to save your company, print ‘Fi Dhilal al-Qur’an.’” Yes, and he did so, and in the same year that Sayyid Qutb was executed, the book was printed seven times. Seven times! And during his life, it was only printed one and a half times – they did not even complete the second printing. Everyone who read Sayyid Qutb’s books returned to Allah and was affected by him, and the curse of Allah came down on those who had prevented people from reading them before. While they used to pound and whistle and jump up and down in the streets while his books were being burned, you now do not find a group of Muslims on Earth except that his books are with them, as they have been translated into almost every language…”
['Fi Dhilal Surat at-Tawbah'; p. 242-243]
