Sayyid Qutb's purpose-driven life

In yesterday's Dallas Morning News, I published an essay about why we should all be paying attention to the legacy of Sayyid Qutb, the philosopher of Islamic terrorism. (Dr. Billy Abraham, a theologian at SMU, wrote a companion piece about why we should all start to appreciate that the essence of the war on terror is theological -- on both sides.) I got an e-mail from our old friend Mohamed Elibiary, the north Texas Muslim activist who, when last mentioned on this blog, was writing to tell me that if I keep writing things like this I might find my car tampered with -- didn't like my take on Qutb. He writes, in part:

Reading Rod's piece, I finally grasped why Qutb is so feared. It’s always easier to direct our fears at one focal point then face our challenge. ... Many Westerners who've read Qutb's and many others' work, see the potential for a strong spiritual rebirth that's truly ecumenical allowing all faiths practiced in America to enrich us and motivate us to serve God better by serving our fellow man more. At that point, America will have a spiritual product that’s exportable and satisfactory to the spiritual marketplace’s demand. So I'd recommend everyone read Qutb, but read him with an eye to improving America not just to be jealous with malice in our hearts.

I quite agree that we should all read Qutb -- his book "Milestones" can be read in English translation here -- but probably not for the reasons Mohamed thinks. Perhaps "Ambassador Elibiary," as he's now referring to himself, is a more careful reader than I am, but I find it hard to grasp the "potential for a strong spiritual rebirth that's truly ecumenical" in these representative passages from Qutb's manifesto, in which he says quite plainly that true Muslims have no business trying to carry out dialogue with non-Muslims, and that the goal has to be conquering them and imposing Islamic law. That's "ecumenism"?

I understand why it's in Mohamed's interest to obscure this fact, especially given that they were drilling teenagers in the finer points of Qutb's "Milestones" at the Dallas Central Mosque two years ago. But you can't spin Qutb's actual words, which ought to wake people up to the true nature of what the US is facing (and to the internal weaknesses in the West that make that fight difficult). Here's a sample of Qutb's spiritual counsel:

And [the Muslim] is most superior in his law and system of life. When the Believer scans whatever man, ancient or modern, has known, and compares it with his own law and system, he realizes that all this is like the playthings of children or the searchings of blind men in comparison with the perfect system and the complete law of Islam. And when he looks from his height at erring mankind with compassion and sympathy at its helplessness and error, he finds nothing in his heart except a sense of triumph over error and nonsense.

And:

It is not the function of Islam to compromise with the concepts of Jahiliyyah [unbelief] which are current in the world or to coexist in the same land together with a jahili system. ... Islam's stand is very clear. It says that the truth is one and cannot be divided; if it is not the truth, then it must be falsehood. The mixing and co-existence of the truth and falsehood is impossible. Command belongs to God, or otherwise to Jahiliyyah; God's Shari'ah will prevail, or else people's desires.

And most especially:

The foremost duty of Islam in this world is to depose Jahiliyyah from the leadership of man, and to take the leadership into its own hands and enforce the particular way of life which is its permanent feature. ...The chasm between Islam and Jahiliyyah is great, and a bridge is not to be built across it so that the people on the two sides may mix with each other, but only so that the people of Jahiliyyah may come over to Islam...

What does Qutb think about democracy? What does he think about the peaceful advocacy of Islam?

The establishing of the dominion of God on earth, the abolishing of the dominion of man, the taking away of sovereignty from the usurper to revert it to God, and the bringing about of the enforcement of the Divine Law (Shari'ah) and the abolition of man-made laws cannot be achieved only through preaching. Those who have usurped the authority of God and are oppressing God's creatures are not going to give up their power merely through preaching; if it had been so, the task of establishing God's religion in the world would have been very easy for the Prophets of God! This is contrary to the evidence from the history of the Prophets and the story of the struggle of the true religion, spread over generations.

In other words: liberal democracy (e.g., the system set up by the U.S. Constitution) will have to be overthrown by violence, not persuasion. This is the kind of man Mohamed Elibiary is apologizing for. And moderate Muslims should beware: if you don't share his extreme belief, Qutb considers you a sellout and (therefore) an enemy.