By Guest | Published:
October 2, 2009
This is a guest post by Raziq
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What’s wrong with Syed Qutb? I’ve heard this said many times by different people. Some see him as a hero, others the inspiration behind terrorist movements like al-Qaeda. There are even those, like Inayat Bunglawala, who see him as nothing more than a little controversial. In this article I will be taking a brief look at Qutb’s life and ideas, and why he is still admired by militant Islamist movements today.
Early Career
Syed Qutb was born in 1906 in Musha in the Asyut province of Upper Egypt. In his early twenties he moved to Cairo and worked as a teacher for the Ministry of Public Instruction. During this period he was also interested in literature and became known as a literary critic. It is noted that Qutb was liberal in the early part of his life, at one point he even advocated nudism:
By Guest | Published:
September 1, 2009
This is a guest post by Raziq
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The Muslim Brotherhood is the largest Islamist party in the world today. It also claims to be a democratic party. In this article I will be looking at its founder Hasan al-Banna, the reasons why he established the Muslim Brotherhood and his Nazi sympathies.
Hasan al-Banna was born in 1906 to a poor family in Southern Egypt. During his teenage years he took part in demonstrations against British Rule. He later went on to become a school teacher and in 1928 founded the ‘The Muslim Brotherhood’ (MB), the world’s largest Islamist group.
Although the end of the Ottoman Empire was brought about by Turkish secular Muslims, some Muslims, like Banna, blamed “the West” and thus he established the MB with the aim of creating an Islamist State in direct antithesis to western ideals. Banna was able to recruit from a large cross-section of Egyptian society by manipulating issues such as social inequality, public health and the growing conflict in Palestine. Banna claimed his group would solve all these problems and thereby resurrect lost Arab glories.
