Tafsīr as a Product of Social Class Struggle: A Study of Tafsīr Fī Ẓilāl al-Qur’ān

Qur’ānic exegesis (tafsīr) is often treated as a normatively theological product detached from its social context. Yet in modern historical reality, it frequently emerges from ideological conflict and struggles for power. In Egypt during the Nasser era, Fī Ẓilāl al-Qur’ān by Sayyid Quṭb was produced amid political repression and the marginalisation of the Muslim Brotherhood, necessitating a reading that situates it within a landscape of social conflict. This study aims to analyse the tafsīr not merely as an individual hermeneutical work but as a product of class struggle and ideological practice. Employing a qualitative, library-based approach and critical discourse analysis, the research draws on the frameworks of genetic structuralism (Lucien Goldmann), the sociology of knowledge (Karl Mannheim), hegemony (Antonio Gramsci), field theory and symbolic capital (Pierre Bourdieu), and public sphere theory (Jürgen Habermas). The findings demonstrate that the dichotomy of Rabbāniyyah–Jāhiliyyah reflects a structural antagonism between Islamism and secular nationalism. The tafsīr functions as a counter-hegemonic discourse, a strategy for accumulating symbolic capital, and a means of forming a religious counter-public under authoritarian conditions. It is concluded that Fī Ẓilāl al-Qur’ān constitutes a discursive intervention in the contestation of moral and political authority in modern Egypt. This study recommends a structural-conflict hermeneutics approach as an analytical model for movement-oriented exegesis in contemporary Islamic studies.