Sayyid Qutb

Sayyid Qutb was born on 9 October 1906 in Egypt, where he began as a literary critic and educator whose writings entered university curricula by the mid-1940s. He joined the Muslim Brotherhood and produced 24 published books and at least 581 articles, including a 30-volume Qur'an commentary, arguing that Islam demanded a total social and political order and advocating offensive jihad. A stint in the United States deepened his contempt for what he saw as materialistic, violent, sexually obsessed Western culture. In 1966 he was convicted of plotting to assassinate President Gamal Abdel Nasser an…