Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

QUTB, SAYYID • 571Sayyid Qutb exercised a cardinal influence on the development of Islamicfundamentalism through his writings and directly influencedthe theory and practice of such fundamentalist groups as the variousbranches of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Munazzamat al Jihadgroup, and others who have used Qutb’s doctrine of jihad to justifyterrorist actions against “apostate” Muslim governments and rulers aswell as against perceived external enemies of Islam.In his seminal work, Ma’alim fi al Tariq (Milestones), Qutb advancedthe argument that since the main object of jihad was enforcingfull enactment of the Islamic law, rather than defense of Muslimlands or conquest of non-Muslims as such, there was no reason forMuslims to abstain from initiating military force to advance Islam inthe world. Qutb’s works also demonized Westernizing and secularnationalist Muslim political leaders as agents of a revived jahiliyyah(pre-Islamic heathenism) who therefore were to be counted amongthose enemies of Islam who could be lawfully attacked at will bytrue believers. The Munazzamat al Jihad group incorporated Qutb’sthoughts into its doctrine and enacted them with the assassination ofEgyptian President Anwar Sadat on 6 October 1981.Sayyid Qutb joined the Muslim Brotherhood in 1951 but was imprisonedin 1954 due to a crackdown on the Brotherhood followingan unsuccessful assassination plot against Egyptian President GamalAbdel Nasser. Qutb was released in 1964 but was directly implicatedin another assassination plot against Nasser in 1965 and executed on29 August 1966.The influence of Qutb was also perpetuated by his brother, MuhammadQutb, who wrote several books advancing his brother’sviewpoint and who influenced many as a teacher at King Abdul AzizUniversity in Saudi Arabia, where he introduced Osama bin Ladento the works of Sayyid Qutb. Sayyid Qutb was also a mentor of MahfuzAzzam, the uncle of Ayman al Zawahiri who in turn instructedhis nephew in the tenets of Qutb’s thought. For these reasons, SayyidQutb is held by many to have had a major influence on the developmentof the guiding ideology of al Qa’eda and aligned Salafist Islamicfundamentalist groups. It should be noted that Sayyid Qutb hasalso been criticized, both by secularists within the Islamic nations,who found his thought reactionary, and by religious traditionalists,who have criticized him for his facile statements about Islamic lawgiven his own lack of formal instruction in Islamic jurisprudence.