Product Description

Special Edition of the famous book by ash-Shaheed Sayyid Qutb.

Continuously read and reprinted down to the present, and translated into most languages, `Milestones' is arguably the most important Islamic literary piece written in the 20th century.

Few thinkers have had such an influence on the contemporary Islamic thought as ash-shaheed Sayyid Qutb. Since his execution in 1964 in Cairo, his death became the perfect illustration of one of the processes through which a human being becomes part of the revolutionary movement aimed at changing the world and bringing in a new ethical moral order based on freedom, brotherhood, and justice for all.

Islam stands for change. It seeks to change the individual and the society. This change covers every aspect of human life: form personal morality to business economics and politics. It is only natural that Islam should be fought b those who want to keep the status quo. This is the way it has always been throughout history: Adam to Nuh, Ibrahrim, Musa, Isa, and Muahmmad (peace be upon them). It will happen to anyone who wants to stand up and proclaim the true message of Islam to the world.

In recent times we have the example of ash-shaheed Sayyid Qutb. He was imprisoned, tortured and eventually execute. He was no ordinary Muslim, a man of impeccable Islamic credentials, he made an immense contribution to Islamic and political thought at a time when the Muslim world was still mesmerised by such western notions as nationalism, the nation-state and the fathers of nations. Nationalist rhetoric laced with socialist slogans was the vogue. It was in this atmosphere that an-shaheed Sayyid Qutb bravely raised his voice - indeed his pen - against the false ideologies and in one clean sweep denounced them as a modern-day jahiliyyah (the primitive savagery of pre-Islamic days). He knew it was inevitable that the forces of jahiliyyah would seek to silence him and yet he, unlike others, courageously stood firm and was ready to sacrifice everything in the pursuit of seeking Allah's pleasure. He writes `indeed our words will remain lifeless barren devoid of any passion, until!
we die as a result of these words, whereupon out word will suddenly spring to life and live on amongst

`….We heard that the death sentence….on Imam Shaheed Sayyid Qutb…..had been carried out….Such a great loss. Sayyid Qutb….a man who held fast to his religion, trusting in Allah's victory. Read Milestones to find out why Sayyid (Qutb) was executed.' - Zainab al-Ghazali

Further Comments:
Contents also include: 3 Books - 1) Message of the Teachings by Imam Hasan al-Banna 2) Kitabul Jihad by Imam Hasan al-Banna 3) Mishari ul Ushaq by Imam Ibn Nuhaas

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #65696 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-31
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Robert Irwin, Gaurdian
`Sayyid Qutb is….`the most famous personality of the Muslim world in the second half of the 20th century.'

From the Publisher
BIOGRAPHY
Ash-Shaheed (the Martyr) Sayyid Qutb, who some thirty years after his death is still the most influential ideologue of the as-Sahwah (Islamic revival) in the contemporary Muslim world, began life in the obscurity of the village of Musha (or Qaha) near Asyut in Upper Egypt. He was born there in 1906 to a father who was well regarded in the village for his zuhd (piety) and ilm (learning). He was the eldest of five children and was followed by a brother, Muhammad Qutb, also destined to gain fame as a prolific writer and da'yee (caller to Islam). His sisters, Amina and Hamida, came to attain some prominence in the ranks of the Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood).......

Ash-shaheed Sayyid Qutb will be remembered in history for his legacy of clearly defining the basic ideas of Tawhid (oneness of Allah) and Hakimiyyah (sovereignty of Allah), the clear distinction between pure faith and the association of partners with Allah, in worship and governance - overt and hidden, and the only hope for salvation of humanity. Ash-shaheed Sayyid Qutb was smiling when he was executed, showing his conviction of the beautiful life to come in Jannah (Paradise) - a life he certainly and rightfully deserved.

Customer Reviews

I don't know how you actually award stars to a text of this nature, really.
One of the crucial parts of this book, so often overlooked, is its defensiveness, for lack of a better word. When it was written in 1964, either Communism or Capitalism appeared to be the waves of the future rather than religion.

Like many thinkers before him, Sayed Qutub wrote this in prison really in a kind of despair at the seemingly bleak future for Islam, and-to some extent-borrowing Leninist ideas from the then Egyptian regime as possible ways of saving it.

Up until the Iranian Revolution of 1979, all revolutions e.g. 1789 and 1917, were increasingly secular and materialist in character. The sort of people who fly planes into buildings, and so forth, would see themselves as doing this to save Islam- and by extension the spiritual life of all humanity- from its impending dissolution at the hands of corrupt religious and political authorities and foreign influence, as well as the onward march of the mass media. Hence, the strange wreaths of magnetic tape that used to dangle on trees next to Taleban checkpoints.

The True Embodyment of Islam
A man murdered for his belief and for the most dangerous of weapons against the despotic rulers of today - affecting the way we view our short lives and giving some of the power back to allah.

Qutb captures the essence of what it was that made the mission of the prophet muhammad so successful. In his final chapter, the road, we get a glimpse of what it means to fully commit to an ideology. If you are muslim, this book will change your life and if you are not a muslim the only way to get any benefit from it is with an open mind and heart.

The appendixes are extrordinary, accounts from his life, his family and fellow sholars. A true shaheed.

Know Your Enemy -- The Seminal Text of Radical Islam
If you want to understand radical Islam from first principles, this book is indispensable.

Sayed Qutb was an educated Egyptian Muslim, a literary critic and an author who eventually became the intellectual father of the now globalized radical Islamist movement.

Qutb wrote "Milestones" (sometimes translated as "Signposts") in the mid-1960s from an Egyptian concentration camp for political prisoners. Gamal Abdel Nasser's regime eventually executed Qutb by hanging in 1966.

Qutb's radical conception of Islam is now all too familiar: the modern world is in a state of "jahiliyyah" - a pre-Islamic state where men worship men instead of the one true God. Only a society and government that first puts God at the center, which enacts the Sharia and which rejects all that is not Islam can call itself Islamic. All other societies, governments and leaders (including those who claim to be Islamic) are illegitimate in the eyes of God and of true Muslims.

We also have Qutb to credit for recasting concepts like "jihad" into their current violent, ironic, nihilistic interpretations. Thanks, Qutb.

A perfect companion to this book is Gilles Kepel's "The Roots of Radical Islam", which will give you more background on Qutb and his contemporaries. You should also have some understanding of Islam before you read this book; I recommend Reza Aslan's "No God But God".