How a bad U.S. visit influenced ‘Osama’s brain’

Returning to Egypt in 1951, he wrote a book, “The America I Have Seen,” in which he denounced, among other things, jazz music and what he called the overt sexuality in American culture, particularly among women.

As for American men, he described them as brutish and sports-obsessed, decrying their "primitiveness" when they watched football games, boxing or "bloody, monstrous wrestling matches."

Radicalized
In Egypt, Qutb refashioned himself a militant Muslim, following up his anti-U.S. treatise with his seminal book, the title of which is translated as "Milestones" or "Signposts along the Road." It begins:

“Mankind today is on the brink of a precipice ... because humanity is devoid of those vital values which are necessary not only for its healthy development but also for its real progress. ... [The West] knows that it does not possess anything which will satisfy its own conscience and justify its existence. … It is essential for mankind to have new leadership!”

At around the same time, in 1952, a coup masterminded by a young army officer, Gamal Abdel Nasser, threw out the occupying British and their puppet king, Farouk, replacing them with a socialist-tinged and secularist regime. As time went on, Nasser and his henchmen repressed Islamists, who they saw as the main threat to their power.

The Islamists, including the Muslim Brotherhood, which had evolved from a charitable organization into a political force, were fiercely opposed to Nasser's pan-Arab ideals, which sought to downplay Islam (though it remained the official religion).

Qutb, along with thousands of fellow members of the Muslim Brotherhood, was imprisoned and tortured after an attempted assassination of Nasser.

Ideas born out of torture
Qutb's attitude toward the West was largely formed by life under colonialism and during his stay in the United States, but his experiences in Nasser's torture chambers back home were, say experts, essential in shaping his political theory.

"Qutb’s ideas have been reworked by many movements and inspired different groups," Dr. Maha Azzam, an associate fellow at the London-based Chatham House think-tank and an expert on political Islam, said.

"But it’s important to understand that Qutb experienced life under a very harsh dictatorial regime — it was a particular moment in history and he was speaking to a particular audience about a particular experience," she said.

Qutb came from a tradition of Muslim thinkers who struggled to make sense of the impact of Western civilization on the Islamic world. As Qutb saw it, Nasser's largely secular project was born of European imperialism's influence and, because Egypt was not governed by Islamic law, it must be replaced with a purely Islamic regime.

One of Qutb's central ideas was his concept of jahilliya, comparing the modern “barbarism” of Nasser’s government with the “Godlessness” of the Arabian peninsula before the advent of Islam.

Qutb believed in the need to organize a vanguard of, in effect, professional revolutionaries whose lives were dedicated to restoring Islam as a dominant force in the world. This elite corps, called into existence by one man's faith, would separate from the society he saw as corrupt and set out into the "sea of jahilliya" to convert unbelievers.

Qutb took the unusual step of leveling the serious charge of takfir on virtually all of Egyptian society, essentially excommunicating as “impure” all Muslims who disagreed with his theories, regardless of whether they declared themselves as followers of Islam.

By using this label, Qutb sidestepped the traditional prohibition in Sunni Islam against toppling a Muslim leader — in this case, Nasser — by declaring, in effect, that he was no longer Muslim.

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