Selfishness, greed, lust and, last but not least, the freedom of movement of women: What the guest student Sayyid Qutb experienced in Greeley (Colorado) and Stanford (California) in the late 1940s disgusted him. The Egyptian stayed in the USA for a good two years. In his eyes, the land that is considered the lighthouse of the free world is a den of sin for unfree, because godless people.
Back in Cairo, Qutb joins the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni radical Islamist movement founded in 1928, and calls for armed struggle against British soldiers. When the Egyptian military around Gamal Abdel Nasser put a coup against King Faruk I in 1952 and proclaimed a republic, the brotherhood’s joy and hope were short-lived. Although Nasser ended British rule, his Arab socialism (a variant of the so-called Third Way between communism and capitalism) is not based on Islam.
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