Milestones, Vol. 2: Jahiliyyah, the False Consciousness of Islamism

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 191

Central to the idea of Marxist thought, although Marx himself rarely used the term, is the idea of "false consciousness." People, it is alleged, are going through their lives unaware of the realities of the world around them, existing in an ideologically constructed false consciousness that maintains the existing power structures of the world. (Being "Woke" in fact, is adopting an awakened "true" consciousness of the nature of self-replicating and self-sustaining systemic power and the need to overthrow it.) In the Islamism of the Muslim Brotherhood, as articulated by its intellectual centerpiece, Sayyid Qutb in his 1964 book Milestones (https://amzn.to/4sSnI33 ), there's a similar dichotomy called "Jahiliyyah" (Ignorance) and Islam (submission to God under Shari'a). Of course, this is no surprise because Qutb was a Leninist before he was an Islamist. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay goes back into the text of Milestones to discuss this important concept and its profound parallels to Marxist Communism. Join him to understand.

Milestones, Vol. 1: Islamist Bolshevism: https://youtu.be/uOR5qG07fmA

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