UNDERSTANDING THE MIDDLE EAST:
History, Religion, and the Clash of Cultures
400 pages
Copyright © 2007 by Beechmont Crest Publishing
First edition, 2007
0-9748330-6-1
C H A P T E R 11:
Islamic Fundamentalism and Global Terror
Sayyid Qutb
Hassan al-Banna is credited with being militant Islam’s first organizer in the twentieth century. But all robust political movements need intellectual leaders as well as organizational ones. This is where Sayyid Qutb comes in.
The intellectual leader of the modern jihadist movement did not look the part. Sayyid Qutb was soft-spoken and physically unimposing. He did not wear the beard and Islamic dress that Westerners often associate with the jihadist. Most photographs of Sayyid Qutb show him as a clean-shaven (except for a small mustache) man in formal western dress.
Born in Cairo in 1906, Sayyid Qutb memorized the Koran by the age of ten. He was well educated, and familiar with Western culture. A bachelor, Qutb had plenty of time for writing and study. He was a respected literary figure in Egypt by his early middle age years. He also held a job in the Egyptian Ministry of Education.
As a young man Qutb would have identified himself politically as an Egyptian nationalist and an anti-communist. Like many Egyptians, he was disgusted by the dissolute lifestyle of Egypt’s King Farouk---who was known for his spendthrift, womanizing ways. Qutb also harbored a deep resentment against the British, who maintained an unwanted military presence in his country.
In 1948 the Egyptian government gave Qutb a scholarship to study in the United States. In the immediate postwar years, America was not the object of Arab and Muslim hostility that it has become in recent years. Unlike Great Britain and France, America had mostly kept its soldiers and colonial officials out of the Middle East. America was part of the West; but America stood apart from the countries of Europe as an anti-imperialist, egalitarian nation. Many young Muslim Arabs---including Qutb---were willing to give the United States a chance.
This changed in 1948, when the U.S. emerged as a supporter of Israel. But this controversy was still in its early days as Qutb sailed for the U.S. to begin his studies. Unfortunately, however, Qutb’s time in America would make him more anti-U.S. rather than more sympathetic to American ideals.
Qutb was shocked by the open nature of American sexuality. (And this was in 1948---a very conservative time by contemporary American standards.) In Qutb’s estimation, American women were too aggressive. They wore clingy, revealing clothes. They flaunted their sexuality.
Qutb’s reaction can be partially explained by cultural differences, but his individual circumstances were doubtlessly a factor as well. Qutb was close to his mother and three sisters, but he had no romantic or sexual outlets. His writings indicate that his one early attempt at romance had ended badly.
To make matters worse, the researcher Alfred Kinsey had just released a landmark report on American sexual behavior (“Sexual Behavior in the Human Male”). The report’s lurid statistics about extramarital affairs, sex with prostitutes, and homosexual experimentation only confirmed Qutb’s worst suspicions about the West. Qutb would later cite Kinsey’s findings as evidence of the sinfulness of America.
Qutb also bristled at the new ideas of gender equality that were awakening in America during the postwar years. While in the United States, he took classes at several universities. During lectures and classroom discussions, he heard American women propose radical (from his perspective) ideas about the nature of the family and male-female relations. Qutb had heard enough; he wanted no part of American feminism.
At the same time, Qutb was repulsed by the open discrimination against African-Americans that was still acceptable in American society. Sayyid Qutb was dark-skinned himself; and American hypocrisy concerning racial justice troubled him deeply. The U.S., he decided, was no more egalitarian than France or Great Britain.
(end of chapter excerpt)
Buy Understanding the Middle East at Amazon.com
Copyright 2005 Beechmont Crest Publishing
