THE FATHER OF RADICAL ISLAM

During the 1940s, a mild-mannered Egyptian teacher decided to sit down and write some criticisms of the Egyptian government. A few published articles later, the government reacted angrily, forcing the teacher into exile.

Sayyid Qutb fled to the United States, where freedom protects those who criticize government. But instead of drinking in the concept of freedom of expression, Qutb became outraged over America's moral permissiveness, which he blamed on rampant secularism. After three years in America, Qutb became convinced that religion should be a major force in governing every nation's approach to morality.

He returned to Egypt in 1951 and promptly joined the Muslim Brotherhood. An Islamic boy wonder, Qutb zoomed up through the organizational ladder, becoming advisor to Gamal 'Abd al-Nasser, who led the 1952 revolution and later became President of Egypt. But a failed assassination attempt on Nasser's life in 1954 was laid at the dusty feet of the Muslim Brotherhood. In the resulting confusion, Qutb was put into prison for ten years.

In his small cramped cell, the former teacher continued to write, producing a book called Milestones, which was to radical Islam what the Communist Manifesto was to Socialism. There were six basic thrusts to Milestones:

1. Islam and the state must be unified
2. Decadent Western culture can only be saved by Islam
3. Freedom can only occur when everyone came under the authority of Allah.
4. Political systems not based on the Qur'an and the "hadith" are flawed and must be destroyed.
5. Capitalism, Socialism and Communism made their people "ignorant" and must be eliminated.
6. Muslim governments which do not follow the "true faith" are Muslim in name only, and should be toppled.

Because Qutb's ideas were a direct attack on the Egyptian government, he was rearrested, tortured and killed.

But Milestones lived on, becoming the "Bible" of radical Islam. Its central theme -- that Islam must be aggressively proactive to fight and destroy the forces of evil -- spawned many radical and terrorist movements. Some of the most violent: Gamaa Islamiyya, Takfir wal Hijra, Salvation from Hell, Muhammad's Youth and Islamic Jihad and Hamas. Major revolutionary figures inspired by Qutb include Ayatollah Khomeini, Shaykh Omar 'Abd al-Rahman, Osama bin Laden and Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Thus there was a straight line linking Qutb to bin Laden to the destruction of the World Trade Center.

There is a lesson in all this:

If we had been alert to the book Milestones in 1964, we would have had almost forty years to learn how to cope with radical Islamic terrorism. Instead, the world's intelligence services were very much asleep at the switch.

Unfortunately, it is a mistake we make over and over again.

Communist Russia was foretold by Karl Marx in his Communist Manifesto. But nobody seemed to read it except for a few oddballs named Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin.

Nazi Germany was foretold by Adolph Hitler's Mein Kampf, but nobody was interested other than a few nuts like Goebbels, Speer, Himmler and Hess.

Today I wonder who may be sitting in a cramped jail cell or a small hotel room writing a new recipe for world disaster.

And I wonder who will read it.

Probably not the world's intelligence services.

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