Sayyid Qutb - The Emergence of the Islamist 1939-1950
The intellectual career of Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), an Egyptian poet, educator, journalist, literary critic and leading intellectual of the contemporary Islamic movement in Egypt and the Arab world, is the subject of this study. By examining the stage in Qutb's life which has received the least amount of attention from writers, the author seeks to understand the transformation in Qutb's world-view (Weltanschauung) in the 1940s and to raise questions about the factors that led to the emergence of Qutb as an Islamist in the late 1940s.