qutb

Said Qutb moved to the US and spent lots of time around Americans before starting an anti-Western ideological group.

But Qutb saw something else: the dancers in front of him were tragic lost souls.

For example, Sayyid Qutb - the grandfather of modern Salafism - became radicalized after visiting US in 1940s, and observing its culture.

Sayyid Qutb wrote Milestones in 1964, drawing inspiration from mass popular movements - religious and secular - of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Such creatures, Qutb believed, could corrode the very bonds that held society together.

Sayyd Qutb going to a sock hop no more caused 9/11 than a chance encounter bin Laden had with a courier in 1977.

You may also want to read up on Sayyid Qutb and Leo Strauss.

The Ba'ath Party is explicitly National Socialist; Sayyed Qutb and the Muslim Brotherhood were influenced by them, as are organizations descended from them.

Another example might be Sayyid Qutb: was 1940s USA really that heinous for an ordinary Egyptian, or did Qutb just feel ill at ease during his time in the country and direct that frustration in an unhealthy direction?

For example, Sayyid Qutb - the founder of modern Salafism, more or less - became radicalized, in part, by him being exposed to the American culture.

There will always be crazies, but crazies like Qutb would likely not have as many supporters if they didn't have a wide base of people with real reasons to dislike the US to draw from.

There is anecdote that Sayyid Qutb really turned away from modernity and towards Islamism when he witnessed a Church in Colorado (he was at UC Boulder) that held a mixed dance in one of the Church buildings.

Sayyid Qutb, the godfather of al-Qaeda's ideology, was famously "radicalized" by going to a sock hop in Colorado in the 1950s.

And wow, just look at the amazing descender on "Sayyid Qutb".

Made me think of Sayyid Qutb's "The America I have seen": Qutb argues that the American way of life, with its focus on hedonism and consumerism, corrupts the moral self and reduces human relationships to short-lived pursuits of pleasure.

His Wikipedia article disagrees with this, saying "Upset that Nasser would not enforce a government based on Islamic ideology, Qutb and other Brotherhood members orchestrated a plot to assassinate the Egyptian president in 1954.

I mean it would also fit seamlessly into an Islamist lecture from Sayyid Qutb, or a primitivist rant from Ted Kaczynski, and so on.

One of the key initial moments in the disenchantment came with Sayyid Qutb[1]'s journey to the US and writing about it.

For Qutb, submission to Sharia law would unleash a new golden age of progress - it was secularism, rather, which was holding us back.