« Dynamic Models | Main | I felt the earth - move - under my feet »
March 10, 2005
The Qutbdex at Ideofact
Hurrah! Apparatus! Let me point you to the Qutbdex, "a slightly annotated index to all Sayyid Qutb posts on paleo Ideofact and ideofact." If you don't know Bill Allison's ideofact you're not reading all the blogs you should. Mr. Allison has been reading his way through the works of Sayyid Qutb (starting with Social Justice in Islam and currently dealing with The Islamic Concept and Its Characteristics). Here's Mr. Allison's summary of why this is worth doing:
Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966) was an Egyptian author, literary critic, bureaucrat, and one time American student who went on to become the most prominent of the radical fundamentalist thinkers of the post-Colonial period; his political thinking has become the platform of some of the more radical terrorist groups; numerous articles note that both Osama bin Laden and Ayam al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's number one and two, have been influenced by Qutb.
From the Wikipedia entry on Qutb(as of 7:42 AM EST 3/10/2005 - you know how Wikipedia is):
One of Qutb's main ideas was applying the term Jahiliyya, which originally referred to humanity's state of ignorance before the revelation of Islam, to modern-day Muslim societies. In his view, turning away from Islamic law and Islamic values under the influence of European imperialism had left the Muslim world in a condition of debased ignorance, similar to that of the pre-Islamic era (or Jahiliyya).I've read all the entries and think they're going to make a fine free-standing webiste of their own someday.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at March 10, 2005 7:31 AM