Posted on 03/09/2006 8:12:14 PM PST by Westlander
Before Sayyid Qutb became a leading theorist of violent jihad, he was a little-known Egyptian writer sojourning in the United States, where he attended a small teachers college on the Great Plains. Greeley, Colorado, circa 1950 was the last place one might think to look for signs of American decadence. Its wide streets were dotted with churches, and there wasn’t a bar in the whole temperate town. But the courtly Qutb (COO-tub) saw things that others did not. He seethed at the brutishness of the people around him: the way they salted their watermelon and drank their tea unsweetened and watered their lawns. He found the muscular football players appalling and despaired of finding a barber who could give a proper haircut. As for the music: “The American’s enjoyment of jazz does not fully begin until he couples it with singing like crude screaming,” Qutb wrote when he returned to Egypt. “It is this music that the savage bushmen created to satisfy their primitive desires.”
(Excerpt) Read more at smithsonianmagazine.com ...
Good find, too long to read now. Bookmarked for later but I did get this far "Qutb was among the first champions of Naguib Mahfouz, a young, modern novelist who, in 1988, would win the Nobel Prize in Literature."
I must say that my mom (the staunchest of republicans) read some of Mahfouz's stuff and loved it.
---He seethed at the brutishness of the people around him: the way they salted their watermelon and drank their tea unsweetened and watered their lawns. ---
Who wouldn't be angry? :^)
That IS barbaric...
Reading the article I found similarities between what many lefties say about America and what this turd said. Sad but true.
I just used it on this post (for the first time) .
It finally lets me easily organize all the pages/post that I want to set aside for later reading and it just takes a couple clicks.
Now I can clean up saved pages etc. that are scattered into about a dozen folders.
Well, I watch "South Park."
As an American Barbarian, it gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling to find that this "cultured and refined" example of the Old World got a chance to do an Air Dance when Nasser gave this arrogant sack of canal water a Short Drop and a Sharp Stop in 1966...
I've lived in Colorado most of my life. Maybe we are barbarians since most of us are decended from Vikings. So they better watch their worthless butt's because my ancestors used to use their fallen enemies to cook their meals with. Just for the fun of it.
Using Ffox 1.5 ?
Yeah, just downloaded it and plugged it in tonight. It makes it so much easier to save and organize posts and pages in a couple easy strokes.
Good for you all. I wish the Scandos would get over all the peace/love/sex crap they've been into over the last generation or so. Maybe the cartoon jihad will wake them up. The west needs its Vikings in fighting trim once again.
Here is where he misread Americans at the onset. We joke, however inappropriately, in the face of hideous death. It lets us disconnect when possible, to survive to deal with another day and ignore our own mortal nature.
These curvy jezebels pursued boys with “wide, strapping chest[s]” and “ox muscles,” Qutb added with disgust.
Hmmmmm. Beefcake envy...
“The true value of every civilization...lies not in the tools man has invented or in how much power he wields,” Qutb wrote. “The value of civilizations lay in what universal truths and worldviews they have attained.”
Enlightenment and philosophy neither defend the ramparts nor feed the herd. Value is nothing without strength, too.
But herein lies the root of it all:
After noting the stupidity of his Greeley neighbors, who failed to understand his dry and cutting jokes, Qutb writes: “In summary, anything that requires a touch of elegance is not for the American, even haircuts! For there was not one instance in which I had a haircut there when I did not return home to even with my own hands what the barber had wrought.” This culminating example of inescapable barbarism led directly to his conclusion. “Humanity makes the gravest of errors and risks losing its account of morals, if it makes America its example.”
Oh boy. First not enough muscles, then they did not laugh at his jokes... (well, I guess it was likely he did not get much attention from the fair sex, and that can build a wee bit of tension in a young man...)
But as for the rest, I have had many bad haircuts, so often that I just let my hair grow after 1991, and trim the ends now and then. Never called for a 'holy' war over it, though...
Good read, Westlander, thanks. Sure shows how the fate of the world seems to be in the hands of the demented at times.
Ping; I think you'll appreciate this.
Thank You, and any one else as well who took time to read.
Outstanding article. Thank you!
But why did you say, "Long time in the works."? Did you write it?
I'd swear the minute they saw the out of state plates and figured out you were an oilfield worker, they got the barber school dropout from the back where they kept them drooling over a bucket and turned them loose, knowing full well you'd never be back, and then charged full price.
After one of the worst drew blood twice in one haicut, I'd had enough.
For the price of a couple of glorified rubber bands, I have avoided hair in my eyes and saved a mint over the years, too.
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