information:filtering, stylistic:style_transfer, stylistic:tone
Jahiliyyah versus freedom in Islam

This exposure to abuse of power crucially contributed to the ideas in Qutb's prison-written Islamic manifesto Ma'alim fi-l-Tariq, where he advocated a political system that is the opposite of dictatorship — the Sharia, "God's rule on earth". Qutb believed that there are only two kinds of societies: Islamic and Jahili. According to Qutb, all the existing Muslim societies are also "jahili societies" since they relegated "the legislative attribute of God to others". He further wrote:

"The Muslim community has long ago vanished from existence and from observation, and the leadership of mankind has long since passed to other ideologies and other nations, other concepts and other systems."

Qutb argued:

Qutb emphasized that this struggle would be anything but easy. True Islam would transform every aspect of society, eliminating everything non-Muslim. True Muslims could look forward to lives of "poverty, difficulty, frustration, torment and sacrifice." Jahili ersatz-Muslims, Jews and Westerners would all fight and conspire against Islam and the elimination of jahiliyyah. Qutb's revolutionary claims of the Islamic World being upon " Jahiliyya " and absence of "pure Islam" in the modern era set him apart from his Islamist predecessors. For mainstream Islamist ideologues like Hasan al Banna, Abul A'la Mawdudi and Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, both society and state were Islamic despite the influence of " Jahili culture" of the West.