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Sheik Jamal Said stood before the packed mosque and worked the crowd like an auctioneer. Speaking Arabic, the prayer leader asked for a donation of $10,000. No one responded. He asked for $5,000, and three men raised their hands. < SNIP> The recipient of the worshipers' generosity was Sami Al-Arian, a Palestinian activist accused by the U.S. government of aiding terrorists. And the prayer leader's passionate appeal is a reflection of the ascendancy of Muslim hard-liners at the mosque, one of the most outspoken and embattled in the U.S. The mosque did not become this way without a struggle. Relying...

Sayyid Qutb's MilestonesEverything You Always Wanted to Know About Sayyid Qutb's Milestones, But Couldn't Be Bothered to Find Out Elmer Swenson 1. Introduction: Who is Sayyid Qutb, and what's so special about his book Milestones, aka Signposts? 2. Qutb and the Muslim Community 3. Qutb and Shari'ah Law, the Islamic Vanguard and Slavery 4. Qutb on Sex, Women and the Family 5. Qutb on Politics: Progressive Islam, Nationalism, Democracy, Socialism 6. Qutb on Politics: Racial Equality and Freedom 7. Qutb and non-Muslims: The West 8. Qutb and non-Muslims: Christians, Jews and Freedom of Religion 9. Qutb and Peaceful Co-Existance with...

The Sunday morning pundits preach that the terrorist attacks around the world continue because American troops remain in Iraq. These so-called “experts” claim that Iraq is a training ground for attacks in Europe and America. Have these armchair-terror-experts forgotten the 50-year Islamic training ground called Israel? These “experts” also seem to believe that this split between so-called “moderate” Muslims and the Islamic terrorists is something new. These “experts” have missed the mark by about 1300 hundred years. The present Islamic terrorists are a result of the split within Islam between Muslims who wish to live in the 21st century, secular...

A masterful new work on al-Qaeda and 9/11 explains how a loser cult has metastasized On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, U.S. and Afghan troops in "eastern Afghanistan" -- a vague delineated land that doesn't necessarily stop at the Pakistani border -- captured a man called Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Who? Well, he was the head of Hezb-i-Islami -- or, latterly, one faction of it. And for a while he was prime minister of Afghanistan, and an opponent of the Taliban, and then an ally of the Taliban. And in recent years he's been Iran's Mister Big in the Hindu Kush. He's...

Many people believe you couldn't have found a more conservative, religious and docile town in America than Greeley in 1949. There were many churches, and no bars or liquor stores allowed in town. But a six-month stay here in Greeley by an Egyptian student in 1949 made him so angry that he wrote books to express his anti-American diatribe. His name was Sayyid Qutb (SIGH-yid KUH tahb) and he became one of the founders of Islamic terrorism. Television specials, literary magazines, stories in major newspapers, thousands of blogs and now a new book have noted Greeley's influence on the man...

A RADICAL Muslim thinker who inspired al-Qa'ida is being served up as subject matter for high school students in NSW. Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian militant hanged in 1966 but still a powerful influence on violent Islamists, and the Pakistani fundamentalist Sayyid Maududi are the only two modern Muslim thinkers on a revised syllabus for studies of religion. Experts this week condemned the prominence of political Islam in the new syllabus, and especially the inclusion of Qutb. "I am surprised and dismayed that the NSW religion syllabus narrows modern Islamic thinkers to its totalitarians," said Daniel Pipes, whose US-based Middle East...

On Wednesday, January 18, I received an e-mail from someone identifying himself as “Ahmed.” He wrote to me that he was a “Muslim activist” and that he wanted me to come on his radio show to discuss my work, or, in his words, “to give [my] side of the story.” In doing a simple web search on his e-mail address, it turned out that this individual was none other than the Director of Communications for the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Ahmed Rehab. While I didn’t know his motives in contacting me, I had recalled when...

Victory in war, and particularly in counterinsurgency wars, requires knowing one’s enemy. This simple truth, first stated by Sun Tsu more than two millennia ago, is no less important in the war on terrorism today. It has become almost common wisdom, however, that America today faces an enemy of a new kind, using unprecedented techniques and pursuing incomprehensible goals. But this enemy is not novel. Once the peculiar rhetoric is stripped away, the enemy America faces is a familiar one indeed. The revolutionary vision that undergirds al Qaeda’s ideology, the strategy it is pursuing, and the strategic debates occurring within...

Four years after President Bush launched a war to oust Osama bin Laden from his hideout in Afghanistan, many are mystified how a polite son of a millionaire construction magnate in Saudi Arabia could turn into the world’s most wanted terrorist. According to many experts, a clue may lie in the life and works of Sayyid Qutb, an Islamic ideologue who was radicalized after an overwhelmingly negative experience in the United States and later imprisoned and executed by Gamal Abdel Nasser’s regime in Egypt in 1966...Qutb’s journey to radicalism started in 1948 when the Egyptian government sent the young school...

The basic ideology of political Islam - which was adopted later by all radical groups - finds its origin within Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. During the 1940s the Muslim Brotherhood turned into a powerful extra-political force, leading a campaign of violence and assassinations that eventually brought about the Free Officers revolution in 1952, thus ending the sole liberal experience in Egypt's history. Later it also turned against Nasser and tried to kill him in 1954 but failed. Nasser declared the organization illegal and arrested 60,000 people, condemning its leaders to death. President Sadat released the members of the Muslim Brotherhood in...

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...

March 23, 2003 The Philosopher of Islamic Terror By PAUL BERMAN I. In the days after Sept. 11, 2001, many people anticipated a quick and satisfying American victory over Al Qaeda. The terrorist army was thought to be no bigger than a pirate ship, and the newly vigilant police forces of the entire world were going to sink the ship with swift arrests and dark maneuvers. Al Qaeda was driven from its bases in Afghanistan. Arrests and maneuvers duly occurred and are still occurring. Just this month, one of Osama bin Laden's top lieutenants was nabbed in Pakistan. Police agents,...

“Islamic Revivalist” Sayyid Qutb and His Influence on Modern Islamic Fundamentalism Introduction In the mid-20th century, Islamic fundamentalism emerged as a major movement in the Middle East. It had its ideological roots in the works of nineteenth century Islamic modernist thinkers such as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Muhammed Abduh, and Rashid Rida, who laid the philosophical framework for modern Islamic fundamentalist movements. These thinkers agreed that Islam was in decline, and called for change to reinvigorate their religion, and cope with the influence of the European powers that had begun to colonize traditionally Muslim lands during the first half of the...