Posted on 07/23/2004 11:05:19 AM PDT by Pyro7480
From Chapter 2: The Foundation of the New Terrorism
Bin Ladin also relies heavily on the Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb. A member of the Muslim Brotherhood11 executed in 1966 on charges of attempting to overthrow the government, Qutb mixed Islamic scholarship with a very superficial acquaintance with Western history and thought. Sent by the Egyptian government to study in the United States in the late 1940s, Qutb returned with an enormous loathing of Western society and history. He dismissed Western achievements as entirely material, arguing that Western society possesses “nothing that will satisfy its own conscience and justify its existence.”12
Three basic themes emerge from Qutb’s writings. First, he claimed that the world was beset with barbarism, licentiousness, and unbelief (a condition he called jahiliyya, the religious term for the period of ignorance prior to the revelations given to the Prophet Mohammed). Qutb argued that humans can choose only between Islam and jahiliyya. Second, he warned that more people, including Muslims, were attracted to jahiliyya and its material comforts than to his view of Islam; jahiliyya could therefore triumph over Islam. Third, no middle ground exists in what Qutb conceived as a struggle between God and Satan. All Muslims—as he defined them—therefore must take up arms in this fight. Any Muslim who rejects his ideas is just one more nonbeliever worthy of destruction.13
Bin Ladin shares Qutb’s stark view, permitting him and his followers to rationalize even unprovoked mass murder as righteous defense of an embattled faith. Many Americans have wondered,“Why do ‘they’ hate us?” Some also ask, “What can we do to stop these attacks?”
Bin Ladin and al Qaeda have given answers to both these questions. To the first, they say that America had attacked Islam; America is responsible for all conflicts involving Muslims. Thus Americans are blamed when Israelis fight with Palestinians, when Russians fight with Chechens, when Indians fight with Kashmiri Muslims, and when the Philippine government fights ethnic Muslims in its southern islands. America is also held responsible for the governments of Muslim countries, derided by al Qaeda as “your agents.” Bin Ladin has stated flatly,“Our fight against these governments is not separate from our fight against you.”14 These charges found a ready audience among millions of Arabs and Muslims angry at the United States because of issues ranging from Iraq to Palestine to America’s support for their countries’ repressive rulers.
Footnotes cited:
11.The Muslim Brotherhood, which arose in Egypt in 1928 as a Sunni religious/nationalist opposition to the British-backed Egyptian monarchy, spread throughout the Arab world in the mid–twentieth century.In some countries, its oppositional role is nonviolent; in others, especially Egypt, it has alternated between violent and nonviolent struggle with the regime.
12.Sayyid Qutb, Milestones (American Trust Publications, 1990). Qutb found sin everywhere,even in rural midwestern churches. Qutb’s views were best set out in Sayyid Qutb,“The America I Have Seen” (1949), reprinted in Kamal Abdel-Malek, ed., America in an Arab Mirror: Images of America in Arabic Travel Literature: An Anthology (Palgrave, 2000).
13. For a good introduction to Qutb, see National Public Radio broadcast,“Sayyid Qutb’s America,”May 6, 2003 (online at www.npr.org/display_pages/features/feature_1253796.html).
14. “Bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America,’” Observer Worldview, Nov. 24, 2002 (trans., online at http://observer.guardian.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,845725,00.html). The al Qaeda letter was released in conjunction with the release of an audio message from Bin Ladin himself.
Sayyid Qutb ping!
Ah, yes, the inspirer of modern jihad, disgusted by America, terrified of American women, a real numbnuts arsehole.
Hung by Nasser.
"For a good introduction to Qutb, see National Public Radio broadcast..."
Screw NPR.
If anyone's interested, have a peek at "Muslim Extremism in Egypt" by Gilles Kepel.
It appears to always be a recombinant nerd who propagates a theory that results in massive suffering.
I wonder how one pronounces the name "Qutb."
A book called A Fury for God by Malise Ruthven has a very nice chapter(s) describing his voyage to America, his stay in Greeley Colorado and his subsequent disgust with Jazz, (DUKE Ellington, of all people), American life and particularly the women, always the women.
Sometimes I think the way to beat jihad is to make sure all the young jihadis in madrassas get laid.
Kuttub. Koo toob
Thanks. I had it worked out as something like kut bee, but I just knew that was wrong.
In other words, bin Laden is a conspiracy theorist. Like all conspiracy rheorists, his intellect is too feeble to understand the mysterious forces which move events, so he ascribes everything to some powerful, many-tentacled evil. Any shortage of evidence that the octopus is behind this or that event is in itself just confirmation that the octopus hides well.
The "root cause" of Islamic terrorism against the West is the same as the "root cause" of Oliver Stone movies: gross stupidity.
"The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts...[he] ascribes all his failures to get on in the world, all of his congenital incapacity and damfoolishness, to the machinations of werewolves assembled in Wall Street, or some other such den of infamy."
H.L. Mencken
More truth in that than you know. Marx was apparently a mega-loser.
Read "Intellectuals", by Paul Johnson, for the dark side of the Great Man theory of history.
Point well taken. Hitler had a problem with women, so does Clinton. It seems that the inability to be social with women and ignore the sexual undertones that are always present is a common thread among these and other dysfunctional persons in history.
Thats good. The point is well expressed.
Bump.
Thanks for the tip. I have long held that those who ruin mankind and cause suffering are puny of reasoning.
Its the same sound made when spitting.
I am laughing so hard I have tears in my eyes.
It like someone developed an entire religion around the concept “Girls have Coodies”
bump
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