The resemblance of today’s radical Islamists to Hitler’s Nazis of the 1920’s-40’s is kind of a slam-dunk.
It’s an easy connection to make; perhaps too easy, which is why we haven't made it. Seventy years after the demise of the Third Reich, the name ‘Adolph Hitler’ is still a household word. But really, now, has anyone ever heard of Sayyid Qutb, pronounced “koo-toob,” like YouTube, only not so accessible or nearly as entertaining?
Sayyid Qutb Ibrahim Husayn Shadhili (1906-1966) was an Egyptian intellectual who earned the title ‘Father of Jihad.’ Like Hitler, he was a staunch anti-Semite who published a book called ‘Our Struggle Against the Jews,’ a tome that continues to infuse and inspire today’s Islamic anti-Semitism, while his flood of writings justifies the atrocities attributed to ISIS and other Islamic terrorist groups targeting Western culture generally and Jews in particular. Like Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf,’ Qutb’s writings encourage the Muslim world’s young and restless to pursue revolution, much in the way the medieval robber barons urged masses of rootless mercenaries to plunder, all in the name of religion, naturally. He was such a shit disturber, in fact, that an Egyptian tribunal sentenced him to death by hanging in 1966, thereby creating a martyr and patron saint for the cause of Islamic terrorism in the world. Had the Germans done the same with Hitler, history may have turned out quite differently.
Like many religious leaders, Qutb’s opinions concerning the decadence of Western culture were already formed even before he set foot outside Egypt. In 1948, he went to the United States to study American culture first hand but only managed to ignore what was healthy, attractive and positive while fixating on those elements specifically offensive to his own interpretation of the Koran and Islamic values.
He was appalled that American men and women managed to communicate openly and without undue social restrictions or penalties. He was offended by bad haircuts. He hated apple pie. Worst of all, Qutb condemned the openly displayed sexuality of American women and girls:
“The American girl is well acquainted with her body's seductive capacity. She knows it lies in the face, and in expressive eyes, and thirsty lips. She knows seductiveness lies in the round breasts, the full buttocks, and in the shapely thighs, sleek legs – and she shows all this and does not hide it.”
Like Hitler, Qutb remained a bachelor simply because he could never find a woman pure enough to meet his high standards. Perhaps he did eventually get his seventy-two virgins after being hung in Cairo in 1966, but that’s another story. Like Adolph Hitler, Sayyid Qutb spent a few years in prison in his own country for acting on his ideas. And once again like Hitler, Qutb's ideas, refined and expounded in writing during his prison stay, continue to inspire havoc in the world at large. Like the Jihadi’s study of Qutb’s rants, the Neo-Nazi movement’s bible is still Mein Kampf.
Interestingly enough, a primary cause of today’s Muslim anti-Semitism can be laid at the feet of modern European ideologies which have infected the Muslim world; while due to Israeli policies, Muslims suffer a deep sense of injustice and loss. Nonetheless, Sayyid Qutb’s anti-Semitic stance was taken long before the Holocaust and the subsequent establishment of the Jewish state with its abasement of the native population of Palestine.
No need to revisit the long list of terrorist acts inflicted on the innocent (the so-called Unbelievers) around the world in the name of religion or cite the daily flood of images of horrendous savagery displayed by ISIS and other jihad-oriented individuals and groups. No need to squint while looking for apologists on either side of the great Islam-versus-the-rest-of-the-world debate. Yet the so-called West is taking a wrong approach to the root problem.
Like it did during the rise of Nazism and Fascism in the 1930’s, instead of addressing the virus in its midst, the European Union is now demanding harsher penalties against persons who speak out against Islam. Although mild-mannered Canada had enacted a ‘Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act’ (S.C. 2015, c. 29) back in 2015, aimed at curtailing the practice of polygamy and child marriage by certain immigrant groups, by 2018 the government bends over backward to defend what is in fact the opposite. In turn, Quebec radicals attack mosques while a disenchanted Muslim crackpot murders a Canadian soldier on Parliament Hill. The list is long and painful. Is the country confused? Of course, it is. Nobody has read Qutb.
Meanwhile, Facebook shuts down Ex-Muslim and atheist groups due to complaints from Islamic sources. Muslim countries are demanding the identities of users who blaspheme, presumably including this blog. They are calling for the shutting down of web pages in the West that they find blasphemous, and the running-scared West is listening in the same spirit that Neville Chamberlain and other British and French politicians listened to Hitler. Saudi Arabia, a favoured trading partner of the British and French, and a darling of the Americans when it comes to arms sales, has declared that atheists are terrorists.
Ex-Muslims as well as Unbelievers are killed in Muslim countries by populations that have formed mobs mainly comprised of young, poorly educated and disaffected men but often supported by women who encourage their male children to behave in barbarous yet politically correct ways. University students and scholars of both sexes are shot and beaten to death, or publicly tried and beheaded, for questioning Islam. The point is: these things were all seen in Europe (Brown Shirts, Kristallnacht, book burnings, concentration camps, emergence of the Einsatzgruppen, etc.) within living memory.
The normalization of intolerance. How soon we forget!
In any case, now you know who Sayyid Qutb is. And how to pronounce his name.
POSTSCRIPT:
Former advisor to President Trump, Steve Bannon has called for the beheading of FBI Director Christopher Wray and epidemiologist Dr. Anthony Fauci for disloyalty to Mr. Trump. This covert threat - threatening is still technically a criminal act in the USA - has been defended by Steve Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook and one of the world's richest men. "We have specific rules around how many times you need to violate certain policies before we will deactivate your account completely," Zuckerberg said. Okay, Steve. Let's see how fast you deactivate his account when Bannon demands that YOU be beheaded.
"I'd put the heads on pikes. Right. I'd put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you are gone," Bannon said.
“That’s how you won the revolution. No one wants to talk about it. The revolution wasn’t some sort of garden party, right? It was a civil war. It was a civil war.”
Which revolution is Bannon talking about? Obviously, he has much in common with Mister Sayyid Qutb whose dreams of an Islamic revolution failed to reach fruition before his own corpse graced a construction crane in downtown Cairo. This is no joke. Like Sayyid Qutb and Adolph Hitler before him, Donald Trump signals his 'base' with just such off-handed instructions to assassination and violence.
Let's just hope that the good Dr. Fauci keeps a strong contingent of Secret Service agents around himself. Please see www.francescorizzuto.com/post/american-idiot.
Readers’ comments and criticism are very welcome. Please leave your commentary on this blog or contact me directly via my contacts page at www.francescorizzuto.com/contact.
For sample chapters from my novels and short stories, please visit www.francescorizzuto.com.
And thank you for visiting this blog.