Sayyid Qutb

Egyptian political theorist and revolutionary (1906–1966)

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Fame62.8
Momentum7.2
Egypt rank#154
Activists rank#46
Wikipedia84.6K

Lived 1906–1966, aged 60Egypt

Egypt ActivistsActivist

Wikipedia
50 languages
Cross-language footprint
Rank in Egypt
#154
Activists
Era
1906–1966
Aged 60

Summary

Updated 2026-09-01

An Egyptian schoolteacher turned theorist whose books on political Islam — written partly in Nasser's prisons before his 1966 execution — became founding texts for militant movements decades after his death.

Biography

About

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…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Sayyid Qutb

Sayyid Qutb

said1964

Islam's way of life is unique, for in systems other than Islam, some people worship others in some form or another.

— p. 11

Sayyid Qutb

said1964

It is not the intention of Islam to force its beliefs on people, but Islam is not merely ‘belief’.

— Ch. 4, p. 70.

Sayyid Qutb

said1964

Islam knows only two kinds of societies, the Islamic and the Jahili.

— Ch. 7, Islam is the Real Civilization, p. 106.

Sayyid Qutb

said1953

A society cannot be Islamic if it expels the civil and religious Laws of Islam from its codes and customs, so that nothing of Islam is left except rites and ceremonials.

— p. 26

Sayyid Qutb

said1953