Al Qaeda's Godfather

By Rolf Potts, The Believer. Posted January 11, 2007.

The inspiration behind much of today's violent jihadi culture was a shockingly dopey tourist.

With the global rise of political Islamism, many pundits have recently begun paying closer attention to the writings of Egyptian scholar and Muslim Brotherhood publicist Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), whose radical Milestones and thirty-volume In the Shade of the Koran are said to be masterpieces of jihadist thought and persuasion. These writings, which some analysts consider to be an ideological influence on violent Islamist movements such as al-Qaeda, contain an uncompromising anti-Western slant that Qutb supports with observations from his travel experiences in the United States.