Alexis Carrel and Sayyid Qutb

A follow-up from yesterday's post on Radical Islam and the Western Mind. A correspondent asked me for some references regarding the use of Nobel Prize-prize winning French Darwinist eugenicist, Alexis Carrel, by the "brains behind bin Laden," Egyptian Brotherhood propagandist Sayyid Qutb (Qutb's brother was bin Laden's intellectual mentors at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, along with Abdullah Azzam).

The best source I've found is a 2003 article published by Die Zeit (in German, of course) by Frankfurt historian, Rudolph Walther, entitled "The Strange Teachings of Doctor Carrel: How a French Catholic doctor became a spiritual forefather of the radical Islamists."

Here are some excerpts:

The superficial commonalities between Carrel and Qutb are plain: we meet the medical man's elite in a "scientific monastery" as Qutb's "avant garde," and the Carrel's "biological classes" are Qutb's "belief classes." Whether "civilization" (Carrel) or "barbarism" (Qutb) -- neither are "worthy of us," because they contradict "our true nature" (Carrel) or Qutb's "good, healthy nature." Both are quite in agreement in their goal to reconcile knowledge and belief.

The decisive affinities lie deeper, though. Qutb cites no author aside from the Koran as often and as extensively as Carrel. What fascinated Qutb about Carrel was, as Islamic Studies scholar Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi wrote in his 1996 book "Intellectual Origins of Islamic Resurgence," first of all his view of humanity "which he relies on more than the Koran." Second, Qutb follows Carrel's method. The pious doctor complains that "man, this whole," this unique, complex being, is being subdivided and torn apart by social reality and science... The exclusive concentration on the material nature of man had the effect of repressing his spiritual side. [...]

Qutb follows Carrel in making "human nature" the condition and measure of all thought and action. Because "human nature" is simultaneously posited as God-given, both immunize "human nature" against criticism, because God answers queries as little as "nature" does objections. The core of Qutb's supposed Middle Eastern Islamism is formed by a naturalistic logical error that is deeply rooted in European philosophy... Carrel writes: "The goal of life is to follow the laws of life. We decipher these laws from our bodies and our souls, not from philosophical systems and concepts." Thus ethical norms ("laws of life") are derived directly from biological facts and psychological diagnoses. Translated to Qutb's language, human freedom and thus a free, varied society are not possible, only obedience to the law of God. [...]

What Qutb calls "the Islamic method," the integration of education, ethics, economics and politics to a unified system of "divine uniqueness," matches Carrel's "unification of all capabilities and their coordination to a single belief," the "super-science" in every detail ...*** [emphasis added]

Walther notes Abu-Rabi's Intellectual Origins of Islamic Resurgence as a source, but I've also found reference to the connection in Youssef Choueiri's Islamic Fundamentalism, pp. 142-149.

Hope this helps.