Sayyid Qutb
The Life and Legacy of a Radical Islamic Intellectual
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- USD 64.99
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- USD 64.99
Descripción editorial
Sayyid Qutb is widely considered the guiding intellectual of radical Islam, with a direct line connecting him to Osama bin Laden. But Qutb has too often been treated maliciously or reductively-"the Philosopher of Islamic Terror," as Paul Berman famously put it in the New York Times Magazine.
James Toth offers an even-handed account of Sayyid Qutb and shows him to be a much more complex figure than the many one-dimensional portraits would have us believe. Qutb first gained notice as a novelist, literary critic, and poet but then turned to religious and political criticism aimed at the Egyptian government and Muslims he deemed insufficiently pious. After a two-year sojourn in the U.S., he returned to Egypt even more radicalized and joined the Muslim Brotherhood, eventually taking charge of its propaganda operation. When Brotherhood members were accused of assassinating Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, the group was outlawed and Qutb imprisoned. He was executed in 1966, becoming the first martyr to the Islamist cause. Using an analytical approach that investigates without passing judgment, Toth traces the life and thought of Qutb, giving attention not only to his well-known Signposts on the Road, but also to his less-studied works like Social Justice in Islam and his 30-volume Qur'anic commentary, In the Shade of the Qur'an. Toth's aim is to give Qutb's ideas a fair hearing, to measure their impact, and to treat him like other intellectuals who inspire revolutions, however unpopular they may be.
In offering a more nuanced account of Qutb, one that moves beyond the cartoonish depictions of him as the evil genius lurking behind today's terrorists, Sayyid Qutb deepens our understanding of a central figure of radical Islam and, indeed, our understanding of radical Islam itself.
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Toth, an anthropologist who has lived in Egypt and studied Egyptian culture, and is currently an advisor at the new Abu Dhabi campus of New York University, has written a holistic, comprehensive biography of the controversial man considered to be the father of modern Islamic extremism. While other biographers have focused on Qutb's more incendiary works, Toth reviews most of Qutb's catalogue of extensive writings, including early poetry and fiction, chronologically, revealing how Qutb's views evolved in a natural and dynamic way. Readers coming to this book convinced of Qutb's infamy will be surprised to find themselves likely agreeing with, or being swayed by, some of Qutb's views. Further, Qutb's views, as laid out by Toth, make sense, focusing on improving Muslims and the Muslim world. Qutb did advocate violence, but only after other options were exhausted and not exclusively. Toth avoids the trap of automatic, simplistic condemnation and instead unveils the vexing, evolutionary and ultimately fascinating mind of Qutb. The book is a surprising and rounded read.