In short, Qutb articulates what is, from his point of view, a compelling theological rationale against any law that authorizes the state to protect a robust right to religious freedom.
Suhrawardī's illuminationist philosophy has influenced many philosophers who wrote major commentaries on gnostic and Sufi texts, among whom are Qutb al-Dīn Shirāzī (1236 1311 CE), Muḥammad Shahrazurī (d. 1153 CE), and Ibn Turkah Iṣfahānī (c. 1362 1433 CE) Following Suhrawardī there is an even closer nexus between philosophy and mysticism.
It is true that the Brothers produced Ayman al-Zawahiri, now Osama bin Laden's number two and chief ideologue; the writings of Sayyid Qutb, the Brothers' leading thinker in the 1950s and 1960s, are certainly intolerant and hostile to the West.
They remain loyal to the memory, if not fully to the radical ideology, of Sayyid Qutb, a Brotherhood intellectual who was arrested in the same sweep, then hanged for writings that promoted rebellion against "infidel" regimes.
Mr Calvert doubts it; the visit, he believes, confirmed the radical turn in Qutb's thinking, rather than inspiring it.On his return home, Qutb openly identified with Egypt's main Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, although he did not formally join it until 1953.
Qutb opposed the killing of innocents and would have been appalled by what his followers, from the Egyptian radicals of the 1970s and 1980s to the current jihadist groups, have carried out in his name.
Hanging Sayyid Qutb did not exorcise his ideology; his stature, whether among future terrorists or non-violent advocates of Islamism, only grew after his execution.
Muslims may bridle at the view that Qutb and other Islamists were unsettled by the open female sexuality they encountered in the West; this triggered what he calls the "repulsion of attraction".
Qutb is widely seen as a fount of inspiration for radical jihad.
