Sayyid Qutb's "Milestones"

Sayyid Qutb's Milestones
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sayyid Qutb's Milestones,
But Couldn't Be Bothered to Find Out

Elmer Swenson

1. Introduction: Who is Sayyid Qutb, and what's so special about his book Milestones, aka Signposts?
2. Qutb and the Muslim Community
3. Qutb and Shari'ah Law, the Islamic Vanguard and Slavery
4. Qutb on Sex, Women and the Family
5. Qutb on Politics: Progressive Islam, Nationalism, Democracy, Socialism
6. Qutb on Politics: Racial Equality and Freedom
7. Qutb and non-Muslims: The West
8. Qutb and non-Muslims: Christians, Jews and Freedom of Religion
9. Qutb and Peaceful Co-Existance with non-Muslims
10. Qutb and the Future
11. Addendum

[snip]

Why was this FAQ created?

Influential and compact as it is, Milestones is in some ways the ideal place to begin learning about radical Islam. And if in fact it is "the Mein Kampf" of the al Qaeda, it may not only be interesting but rather important to understand. Just as Radical Islamists were able to plan and carry out terror attacks because of their familiarity with the West, so too the West may be able to turn the tables and defend itself better by understanding how their would-be murderers and destroyers think. On the other hand, if the portrayal above of Qutb (or more generally the Islamist revival) is slander, as some allege (see below), that also would be important to clear up. The problem is, Qutb's writing is so bad many non-Muslims and non-Islamists won't have the patience to make their way through the whole thing, or through the whole thing carefully. This FAQ, then is an attempt to make Milestones easier to understand by breaking it down point-by-point and clarifying it. Such points include the questions:

Thanks for the ping Dajjal.

Qutbs work is a cornerstone and highly influential basis for the modern islamic resurgenc, and Milestones is an absolute "must read" to understand the islamic ideology we are up against and why we can never ever appeased or be able to come to an amicable understanding with it's followers. It would be ill-advisable to even try as it would be perceived as more proof of our weakness.

Btw.. There was another Qutb thread on FReep titled "A Lesson in Hate" which examined Qutb on a more personal leval addressing the pent up ideological and sexual frustrations of this self-made outcast when he was in the States. I commented and added a couple of my favorite Qutb quotes from other sources:

Qutbs ranting about America contains obsessive and enlightening passages about those like him interpret the liberated role of women in western society who are in charge of their own sexuality.

Coming from his own primitive islamic background, he interpreted this as one of the offerings of "modernity" he could not understand or assimilate into. His ideology kept him a social outcast, so like many islmaic immigrants, he retreated further away from the ways of the kuffar, seeking help in deluded islamic fantasies.

His reading of the koran lead to antisemitic fantasies (Jews being "ape and pigs" - confirmed in his Koran commentary) explaining the condition of western society as he saw it. From Qutb's "Our Battle Against the Jews":

"The Jews are behind materialism, animal sexuality, the destruction of the family and the dissolution of society. Principal among them are Marx, Freud, Durkheim and the Jew Jean-Paul Sartre."

Of course, Qutb had no fondness of Christians or anyone else either.

"The unbelievers were of three kinds: adversaries in war, people with treaties, and Dhimmies. The people with treaties eventually became Muslims, so there were only two kinds left: people at war and Dhimmies."

The element of sexual frustration, Qutbs repressed sexual envy, and primitive coping mechanisms, is not to be overlooked... the article covers some of his obsession with his looks (his hair etc) and of American women with their "body’s seductive capacity... round breasts, the full buttocks, and in the shapely thighs, sleek legs... - and she shows all this and does not hide it." The last part is important.. all this was "available" but poor social misfit Qutb was left high and dry as they ignored him to chase "“wide, strapping chest[s] and ox muscles." In the "sexual jungle," Qutb, the ugly outsider who could not assimilate was not only at the bottom of the food chain. He was a reject.

This frustration with women in control of their own sexuality, free to choose and reject a mate as they pleased, probably played a key role in turning him all the more inwards towards islam and to reject and grow hatred towards the new culture he witnessed around him.

In a way, there are similarities with Yusof Islam, aka Cat Stevens. Stevens with his talent and fame and failed relationship with a Boston stripper, Qutb with his intellectual and literary prowess, both being made to look like fools by failed relationships or rejection by women they could not control or sexually subjugate.

In islam, they have a system and ideology to totally dominate a woman, the safety of hiding your woman away from potential competition and removing abilities to reject or disobey a husband.

For the weak, rejected man, or control freak, islam is the ideal answer. Allowing a woman equality or to dress as they want, pursue a career, and choose and reject her own partner is so terrifying to them that they would choose to be a slave of allah instead, so they may fall back on the laws of islamic society to enforce their womens submission and obedience to them.

My favorite Qutb quote once again, as it sums up the essence of his message:

"It is not the function of Islam to compromise with the concepts of Jahiliyya (the ways of the infidels) which are current in the world or to co-exist in the same land together with a jahili system. Jahiliyyah, to whatever period it belongs, is Jahiliyyah; that is, deviation from the worship of One Allah and the way of life prescribed by Allah.
It derives its system and laws and regulations and habits and standards and values from a source other than Allah. On the other hand, Islam is submission to Allah, and its function is to bring people away from Jahiliyyah towards Islam. Jahiliyyah is the worship of some people by others; that is to say, some people become dominant and make laws for others, regardless of whether these laws are against Allah's injunctions and without caring for the use or misuse of their authority.
Islam cannot accept any mixing with Jahiliyyah. Either Islam will remain, or Jahiliyyah; no half-half situation is possible."

More proof that Islam is a mental illness---->>>>

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/006458.html

Allah, the compassionate, the merciful

Here is Allah, the one and only God, the God other than whom there is no God, speaking his eternal unchangeable word through his prophet Muhammad:

For the wrongdoers we have prepared a fire which will encompass them like the walls of a pavilion. When they cry out for help, they shall be showered with water as hot as molten brass, which will scald their faces. Evil shall be their drink, dismal their resting-place. [Sura 18, Dawood translation.]

This is not a mere warning of punishment of hell, as we find in the Bible. Nor is it simple sadism, the sickness that derives pleasure from inflicting the maximum of pain on one’s enemies. It is hyper-sadism, sadism raised to the nth degree and eternalized. It is the kind of hyper-depravity that drove Saddam Hussein’s torturing sons and their henchmen, or the beheader Zarqawi and his followers, who, when we read a passage like this, are revealed not as Muslim extremists but as true followers of Muhammad.
Yet this “god,” this all-powerful projection of Muhammad’s hatred and vengefulness, is the god whom the Catholic Church in its 1965 Declaration Nostra Aetate (which Pope Benedict reiterated in St. Peter’s Square on September 20) calls “the one God,” and esteems Muslims for their adoration of him.

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