Militant Islam arose with Muhammed.

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You say that with such an air of authority mozza, as if you actually known something about it, other than what you gleaned from a documentary which tried to paint all Islamist movements as springing from him.

Although Sayyid Qutb (may God shower his soul with mercy) was indeed a very influential intellectual in the Muslim world, his influence was restricted to certain 'strands' of Islamist movements. It's nowhere near as wide reaching and influential as you think.

Go and google a picture of him and see what he looks like, the guy doesn't even have a beard, he's hardly an Islamist ideologue. Many Islamists, most notably the Salafi/Wahabi movement reject him and his writings, and inevitably that's where OBL's teachings come from, not from the MB. OBL did respect him for his unflinching stance in the face of the tyrant Nasser, but he's not quite the "al-Qaedah Godfather" that documentary makes him out to be. In fact this idea has largely been promoted by the Salafi/Wahabis because they want to remove any association of al-Qaedah from themselves (they being closely allied with Americas favourite little Arabian Monarchy and all).

Also keep in mind the guy never even lived in the time of al-Qaedah, never committed a single act of violence against a Western target, nor any target as far as we can tell. So to link him so intrinsically to al-Qaedah and global terrorism is just ridiculous and wrong.

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Come on mozza you completely threw your credibility in the bin there. It's well known and admitted, even by his detractors and opponents, that he was framed for that. Nasser was nothing but a despot who wanted to get rid of the MB, because they helped him into power (naively) and now wanted him to reciprocate, by giving them some say in his new government. He refused and began liquidating their leadership.

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Doesn't 'worry' me. My biggest worries are the leftist enablers of Islam. If we did not have the leftist muslim enabler traitors in our midst, Islam would be easily squashed.

Recently - good news - your trade union former allies are deserting you, right across the EU. So you are left with Leftist Academics and the Leftist Press. Real solid allies there.

Soon Islam in the West will be isolated and crushed.

Well one thing I must say Muslims should thank the West for, is giving them the opportunity to learn about Islam in it's pure unadulterated form, without the confusion of nationalism and cultural baggage that can sometimes cloud people's knowledge of it in the Muslim lands. The clear perspective Muslims have been able to get of Islam, whilst living in the West has facilitated the revival in many ways by helping to break down the innovation which had crept into some countries' cultures.

You should feel proud for having facilitated this

Just like expert Mozza said, Sayyid Qutb (may God shower him with mercy) didn't even come to his realisations until he went to America Thank you America!!

abu_rashid wrote on Feb 24^th, 2010 at 8:48pm:


I'm not sure if we all saw the same doco. The one I saw paralleled the ideas of Qutb (an Arab) and Leo Strauss (a Jew) and showed how they both fermented their ideas in Chicago in the 1960s.

Strauss was a disillusioned liberal, and went on to articulate a foreign policy stance called neoconservatism. This, of course, was the stance taken up by Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz et al, and much of Bush's team.

But Mazzoak brings up another important change in the past 40 years: the Iranian revolution. Reagan was elected on a promise to end the Iranian hostage crisis. It ended, but Reagan went on to devote his energies to his main enemy: the Soviet Union.

This was the primary cause of Strauss's neoconservatism - to defeat communism. Once this happened, the neocons were left in a bit of a vacuum. The main change to occur in the last 40 years, of course, was the end of the Cold War.

It meant that the shifting sands of Arab alliances no longer had a choice between two rival superpowers. During Bush's first election campaign, the Hawks in the Republican Party (Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz et al) were claiming that Clinton had squandered his chance at numero-uno status. Why, for example, was Saddam still in power?

After Sept 11, the new foreign policy of with-us-or-against-us emerged. This, of course, rallied more to the militant Muslim cause. Two ideologies, who had once formed an uncomfortable alliance when the Soviets were around, came to loggerheads: militant Islam and neoconservatism, or what some have called the "clash of civilizations".

These ideas can't exist without the other. Militant Islam needs the US, and Fox News needs images of Muslims chanting and burning the US flag.

And the economy needs secure surpluses of oil.

The Global Financial Crisis showed us who the real meanie is: deregulated financial markets. But I'm sure we'll come to forget the evil bankers as the flag-burning Muslims come back on TV.

And there seems to be so shortage of suicide car bombers.

So the war will go on. The war must go on. And we have always been at war with Eurasia - haven't we?

Right. I love stories that can trace streams of thought to one shared narrative. But, to be honest, I don't know how influential Qutb really was/is.

What he represents to me, however, is a shift in the notions of jihad and globalisation. What the war represents to me is the essence of modernity. Despite what Soren says about the "primitive" nature of Islam, I think the move to a form of external jihad is an essentially modern thing.

And both sides are/must be caught up in it. Soren is as much a modern subject as Abu. Modern global politics require an external enemy/presence to keep us in check. We are enscribed with a "healthy" expression of anger, whether we get it from Today Tonight or some militant website.

And we are enscribed with an unyielding, impermeable "truth".

That's why I liked that doco - it showed both sides coming from the same place. And this is a threat to the maintenance of permanent war.

The jihad is a personal liberation from desire, not a global Caliphate. But the more anger you produce in yourself, the less you can submit to God, which is the very meaning of Islam.

I disagree with Soren about Islam - I believe it's about peace.

But then, so was Christianity, wasn't it?

NorthOfNorth wrote on Feb 25^th, 2010 at 1:12pm:


Well, you won't hear Buddhists talking about God, but yes. I'd prefer Islam went the in the direction of Sufism, for example, to militant Nazism.

Whether it does, of course, is a matter for Muslims. But in the end, none of us are Muslims or Christians or Buddhists. We're just people. And after that, we're corpses.

I'll bet you God cares about your brand of religion as much as the worms, but it'll be a bit hard to pay you off, I know.

Which part of the cemetary we get dropped in matters little in the real scheme of things, don't you think?