238 No god but God
But as Nasser gradually implemented his nationalist agenda in
Egypt, his authoritarian rule began to clash with the egalitarian values
preached by the Muslim Brothers. In January of 1953, as part of
Nasser’s plan to consolidate his control over the government, all par-
ties and political organizations were outlawed except the Muslim
Brothers, whose support was still vital to his popularity with the peo-
ple. The following year, however, when shots were fired at Nasser as
he was delivering a speech in Alexandria, the opportunity to dismantle
the Muslim Brothers finally presented itself. Blaming the attempt on
his life on a conspiracy within the Society, Nasser outlawed the Mus-
lim Brothers; its members were rounded up and imprisoned, its lead-
ers tortured and executed.
In the dank, sadistic prisons of Nasser’s Egypt, the Muslim Broth-
ers fractured along ideological lines. For many members, it became
painfully clear that the socialist vision of changing hearts to change
society had failed. According to these Brothers, al-Banna’s Islamiza-
tion project could not be realized through acts of social welfare. If
Nasser had taught them anything, it was that such lofty ideals could be
enacted only by force. Postcolonial Egypt required a new vision of
Islam and its role in the modern world, and the man who would pro-
vide that vision was, at the time, languishing in a prison cell in Cairo.
Poet, novelist, journalist, critic, and social activist Sayyid Qutb (1906–66)
would come to be known as the father of Islamic radicalism. Born in
Upper Egypt, he had, like al-Banna, moved to Cairo during the tur-
bulent 1920s. After a brief stint in the Ministry of Education, Qutb
traveled to the United States in 1948 to research its educational sys-
tem. What he discovered was a nation committed to individual free-
dom, yet “devoid of human sympathy and responsibility... except
under the force of law.” He was disgusted by what he saw as the coun-
try’s “materialistic attitude” and its “evil and fanatical racial discrimi-
nation,” both of which he blamed on the West’s compulsion to pull
“religion apart from common life.” Qutb was equally frightened at the
rapid spread of Western cultural hegemony in the developing coun-
tries of the Middle East and North Africa, a phenomenon that
the Iranian social critic Jalal Al-e Ahmad dubbed Gharbzadeghi, or
“Westoxification.”