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The bizarre story behind the construction of Boston's most controversial building

The Sayyid Qutb Reader Selected Writings on Politics, Religion, and Society Edited by Albert J. Bergesen Routledge, 2008 0415954258 (paperback; $34.95) 041595424X (hardback; $135.00) Preface It has been said that perhaps no writer has occupied so central a place within the universe of political Islam in the second half of the twentieth century as Egypt's Sayyid Qutb, and if one wants to understand the mind of radical Muslims, one needs to know what they read, or have read, and they read Sayyid Qutb. In general, his work has been divided into three periods. The earliest (1920-1947) centers on more literary...

One of the reasons my writings would tend to be seen as "racist" in contemporary terms is that I don't speak only of defending "America," I sometimes, depending on context, speak of defending "white America"; and I don't speak just of my fear for the future of "Western civilization," I also speak of my concern for "white Western civilization." The racial character of European and British civilization and its overseas extensions is simply a historic fact. Without the white race and its distinct sub-groups and their particular characteristics and cultures, there would have been no Greece, there would have been...

At the annual Cairo antiwar conference in Egypt, the hot panel discussion this year was “Bridge-Building Between the Left and Islam.” John Rees, a British Trotskyite, observed: “Where else can you sit down in a single evening and listen to senior people from Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, people from the revolutionary left and the antiwar movement from around the globe?” Gosh, it sounds great. I’m just sorry I missed the rollicking game of Pictionary between the Castroites and the jihadis afterwards. Steven Stalinsky, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute, recently reported in the New York Sun...

There Is No God but Politics by Theodore Dalrymple (May 2007) In my youth (in which I include my early adulthood), I read a lot of philosophy. In those days, I picked up books of metaphysics with an excitement that I cannot now recapture, and that completely mystifies me, indeed seems to me faintly ridiculous. I still cannot quite make up my mind, however, whether or not I wasted my time. After all, I was a medical student, not someone training to be an intellectual. I doubt that philosophy made me a better person, let alone a better doctor, but...

Apparently, a church dance in Greeley, Colo., led to 9/11. In 1948 Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian writer who became the father of the radical Islamist movement, was sent to the United States to temper his contempt for the West. What he saw over two years — postwar consumerism, suburban lawns, men and women dancing “breast to breast” — only further inflamed his conviction that the West was the enemy of Islam and doomed. Mr. Qutb went on to work up a pseudospiritual justification of Islamic terrorism that inspired and emboldened many, including Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri....

Many people believe you couldn't have found a more conservative, religious and docile town in America than Greeley in 1949. There were many churches, and no bars or liquor stores allowed in town. But a six-month stay here in Greeley by an Egyptian student in 1949 made him so angry that he wrote books to express his anti-American diatribe. His name was Sayyid Qutb (SIGH-yid KUH tahb) and he became one of the founders of Islamic terrorism. Television specials, literary magazines, stories in major newspapers, thousands of blogs and now a new book have noted Greeley's influence on the man...

Sheik Jamal Said stood before the packed mosque and worked the crowd like an auctioneer. Speaking Arabic, the prayer leader asked for a donation of $10,000. No one responded. He asked for $5,000, and three men raised their hands. < SNIP> The recipient of the worshipers' generosity was Sami Al-Arian, a Palestinian activist accused by the U.S. government of aiding terrorists. And the prayer leader's passionate appeal is a reflection of the ascendancy of Muslim hard-liners at the mosque, one of the most outspoken and embattled in the U.S. The mosque did not become this way without a struggle. Relying...

TAJ Din al-Hilali has praised militant jihadists in Iraq and Afghanistan, calling them men of the highest order for fighting against coalition forces - which include Australian soldiers - to "liberate" their homelands... The revelation comes as a neighbouring cleric from Sydney's Bankstown accused Sheik Hilali of supporting military Islamic jihad against the West and called on imams from around the country to band together to force the mufti to step down. As John Howard and Kim Beazley called for Muslims to act against Sheik Hilali, Jamal Rifi, from the Australian Muslim Doctors Against Violence, pleaded with the mufti: "Please...

SHEIK Taj el-Din el-Hilaly, Australia's leading Muslim cleric, supports Islamic fundamentalists fighting wars with suicide bombers and terror. Sheikh el-Hilaly admires Egyptian writer and cleric Sayyid Qutb -- the founder of violent Islamic fundamentalism and spiritual guru to al-Qaida. Qutb was also mentor to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the brains of al-Qaida and lieutenant to Osama bin Laden. Zawahiri's uncle was Qutb's lawyer and a close family friend. Sheikh el-Hilaly made his feelings known in a radio interview this month. And another Sydney Muslim cleric, Ibrahim el-Shafie, of the Bankstown mosque, said he heard el-Hilaly preach that Qutb was a great leader...

I started reading The Looming Tower two days ago and so far, I have read fifty-one pages. My impressions so far - So far, an excellent narrative. These people are insane! And what is worse is we - the United States, the West, et al - attempt to deal with these people from a rational, Western, Christian point of view. It isn't working and it will never work. They have to be cut down like mad dogs. The people who start or lead these destructive idealogies, all seem to be cut from the same cloth. Social misfits who find it...

NVM: Modules     Volume 3, Issue 14 (July 15, 2005) | Download PDF Version Understanding the Origins of Wahhabism and Salafism By Trevor Stanley The phenomenon of Islamic terrorism cannot be adequately explained as the export of Saudi Wahhabism, as many commentators claim. In fact, the ideological heritage of groups such as al-Qaeda is Salafism, a movement that began in Egypt and was imported into Saudi society during the reign of King Faisal. The official ‘Wahhabi’ religion of Saudi Arabia has essentially merged with certain segments of Salafism. There is now intense competition between groups and individual scholars...

The Sunday morning pundits preach that the terrorist attacks around the world continue because American troops remain in Iraq. These so-called “experts” claim that Iraq is a training ground for attacks in Europe and America. Have these armchair-terror-experts forgotten the 50-year Islamic training ground called Israel? These “experts” also seem to believe that this split between so-called “moderate” Muslims and the Islamic terrorists is something new. These “experts” have missed the mark by about 1300 hundred years. The present Islamic terrorists are a result of the split within Islam between Muslims who wish to live in the 21st century, secular...

In my last fiq'h class the professor explained the development and evolvement of Muslim thoughts with regard to fiq'h and arriving at a useful and workable methodology to be used. He identified 4 stages which are as follows: Stage 1 - The time of the four rightful Caliphs when the sahaba (companions) mainly practiced shura (consultation) Stage 2 - Afterwards by the end of the first century of Hijra, different schools were established in various cities, which also used shura to arrive at a local ijma (consensus) Stage 3 - Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafie (or in short Imam...

Sayyid Qutb's MilestonesEverything 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...

A masterful new work on al-Qaeda and 9/11 explains how a loser cult has metastasized On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, U.S. and Afghan troops in "eastern Afghanistan" -- a vague delineated land that doesn't necessarily stop at the Pakistani border -- captured a man called Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Who? Well, he was the head of Hezb-i-Islami -- or, latterly, one faction of it. And for a while he was prime minister of Afghanistan, and an opponent of the Taliban, and then an ally of the Taliban. And in recent years he's been Iran's Mister Big in the Hindu Kush. He's...

WEST ORANGE, New Jersey -- The park is green and quiet. Pathways curve around lawns bordered by rosebushes, daisies and boxwood. Dogwoods shade the grass. A nice place, you think, for a Sunday picnic or an afternoon's stroll. And the view is spectacular, well worth the hour-long drive from New York City. From Lookout Point atop Eagle Rock Reservation, you can see New York City 25 kilometres away, the spiky skyline stretching across the horizon. On a clear day, you can make out the Empire State Building. You can see why George Washington set up an observation post here to monitor...

On October 28, 2005,[1] President George W. Bush denounced IslamoFascist movements that call for a “violent and political vision: the establishment, by terrorism, subversion and insurgency, of a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom.” The Muslim Brotherhood (Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimun)[2] also known as the Ikhwan is a good example of what the President described and what he must protect us against. The Muslim Brotherhood (“MB”) organization describes itself as a political and social revolutionary movement; it was founded in March 1928 in Egypt by Hassan al-Banna, who objected to Western influence and called for return to an original...

A RADICAL Muslim thinker who inspired al-Qa'ida is being served up as subject matter for high school students in NSW. Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian militant hanged in 1966 but still a powerful influence on violent Islamists, and the Pakistani fundamentalist Sayyid Maududi are the only two modern Muslim thinkers on a revised syllabus for studies of religion. Experts this week condemned the prominence of political Islam in the new syllabus, and especially the inclusion of Qutb. "I am surprised and dismayed that the NSW religion syllabus narrows modern Islamic thinkers to its totalitarians," said Daniel Pipes, whose US-based Middle East...

On Wednesday, January 18, I received an e-mail from someone identifying himself as “Ahmed.” He wrote to me that he was a “Muslim activist” and that he wanted me to come on his radio show to discuss my work, or, in his words, “to give [my] side of the story.” In doing a simple web search on his e-mail address, it turned out that this individual was none other than the Director of Communications for the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Ahmed Rehab. While I didn’t know his motives in contacting me, I had recalled when...