Comment Re:I fail to see the issue here... (Score 1) 1002
Actually, Sayyid Qutub started out as an extremely liberal secular cultural thinker, but became somewhat disenchanted with Western Liberalism. However, he didn't begin writing such radical works until he was jailed under Gamal Abd an-Nasr, and tortured heavily. His philosophy was not actually aimed at the west per se, but rather at the secular government of Nasr, whose legitimacy he tried to challenge on the basis of the idea of "daar al-haarb" and "daar as-salaam."
The quote you show above is not about Western powers per se, but rather about the illegitimacy of the Nasr regime. The "daar al-harb" here is Egypt, not the US.
In fact, his ideas would probably have been better articulated had he NOT died from torture in prison. However, the important point here is that acts of torture actually significantly radicallized Qutub, and led to him producing this sort of highly malleable doctrine, something we should think about with respect to our own actions today (torture of possibly innocent people in Guantanamo, bombing of Gaza).
And IAGSIAS(I Am a Graduate Student in Arabic Studies)