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

Unlike the vast majority of Sunnis, Qutb also believed it was permissible to reinterpret key facets of the religion and not rely overwhelmingly on judgments passed by scholars in the first centuries of Islam.

'A particular moment in history'
The Muslim Brotherhood, which at the time favored political compromise in pursuit of its goal of social renewal based around Islamic ideals, distanced itself from Qutb’s ideas and remains divided over his influence, Azzam said.

"Qutb’s writings were part and parcel of a particular moment in history,” Azzam added, “and specifically Egyptian history, with the emergence of Nasser, decolonization, the foundation of the state of Israel and so on."

Qutb’s influence, however, seemed to be doomed when he was executed by Nasser in 1966, ostensibly for treason. About a year later, though, his theories found fertile ground among disillusioned Arabs in the wake of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, in which Israeli forces routed the combined might of several Arab countries, including Egypt. Many Egyptians felt considerable shame and blamed Nasser's secular model for the defeat. (Nasser himself offered to resign and died in office three years later.)

“Only Islamic values and morals, Islamic teachings and safeguards, are worthy of mankind, and from this unchanging and true measure of human progress, Islam is the real civilization and Islamic society is truly civilized,” Qutb wrote in "Milestones."

It is this type of message that has continued to appeal to many radical Muslims, Gohel said.

"It is because of its comprehensive nature that modern Islamic radicalism, using Qutb as a philosophical foundation, must be understood as more than an ideology of hate," he said. "Qutb lays out a road to victory for Islam. This is not just a message of hate for many Muslims. For them, it is a message of hope."

A step beyond
One young Egyptian who was influenced by Qutb’s ideas was Ayman al-Zawahri, later the leader of the Islamic Jihad militant group and bin Laden’s top lieutenant.

In al-Zawahri's brief book “Knights Under the Banner of the Prophet,” smuggled out of Afghanistan in 2001, he wrote that Qutb’s ideas “helped [the Islamic movement] to realize that the internal enemy was a tool used by the external enemy and a screen behind which it hid to launch its war on Islam.”

Al-Zawahri also wrote, “The Nasserite regime thought that the Islamic movement received a deadly blow with the execution of Sayyid Qutb. … But the apparent calm on the surface concealed under it an immediate interaction with Sayyid Qutb’s ideas and … the beginning of the foundation of the nucleus of the modern Islamic jihad movement in Egypt.”

Growing up in Saudi Arabia, bin Laden, too, was undoubtedly aware of Qutb's ideas: his compulsory course on Islamic studies at Abd-al-Aziz University was taught by Muhammad Qutb, Sayyid Qutb's brother.

Al-Qaida has gone much further than Qutb, however, by focusing on the “distant enemy” — America, primarily, and the West more generally — in order to destabilize the “near enemy” — what it sees as apostate regimes in the Islamic world.

"Qutb’s ideas were part of a new way of interpreting Islam in a particular way and it has opened the door for the radicals in a sense," Azzam said, adding, however, that his theories have been adjusted to fit the changing times and situations confronted by successive groups and individuals.

"The writings of Qutb do not legitimize the killing of innocent people as has occurred in the past few years," Azzam said.

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