He was an influential publicist of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose activism was associated with the attempted assassination of Nasser in the middle 50's. Many of the Brotherhood, including Qutb, were thrown in jail. Ten years later, Qutb's publication of a book popularly know in English as Milestones was used as justification for putting him to death by hanging.
This book (full text here) rings more familiar today to western readers than it ever might have in the 60's.
His exortation to a new generation of Muslims to reject modern secular values and return to the ideals of the generation who first learned from the Prophet is as eloquent a call to fundamentalism as I have seen:
We must also free ourselves from the clutches of jahili [ignorant of the guidance of Allah] society, jahili concepts, jahili traditions and jahili leadership. Our mission is not to compromise with the practices of jahili society, nor can we be loyal to it. Jahili society, because of its jahili characteristics, is not worthy to be compromised with. Our aim is first to change ourselves so that we may later change the society.
Our foremost objective is to change the practices of this society. Our aim is to change the Jahili system at its very roots -this system which is fundamentally at variance with Islam and which, with the help of force and oppression, is keeping us from living the sort of life which is demanded by our Creator.
Our first step will be to raise ourselves above the jahili society and all its values and concepts. We will not change our own values and concepts either more or less to make a bargain with this jahili society. Never! We and it are on different roads, and if we take even one step in its company, we will lose our goal entirely and lose our way as well.
We know that in this we will have difficulties and trials, and we will have to make great sacrifices. But if we are to walk in the footsteps of the first generation of Muslims, through whom God established His system and gave it victory over Jahiliyyah, then we will not be masters of our own wills.
He exhorts the overthrow of all secular governments:In this, it is easy to see how a semi-anarchistic network such as Al Qaeda and a totalitarian theocracy such as the Taliban could both find their roots in Qutbism.
The UK's Guardian published this profile of Qutb and his influence on Bin Ladin in November 2001.
Although we hear over and over again that the ills of the Islamic world are from fundamentalist, even among fundamentalists there are very peaceful people. It is largely tracing the influence of Qutbism, not fundamentalism alone, in which on might find the roots of anti-western terror in Islam. These influences are found in the Muslim Brotherhood in America today.
Yet there are voices of moderation, less well known, less often heard. If we wish to see peace in the world, we must find the voices of peace in the communities of Islam and foster them like delicate flames that could be extinguished in the blowback of war.
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