An Author and a Professor!

Being terribly fascinated with neo-conservatives, I, who normally like to curl up with my laptop and books at precisely 8 pm, decided to take my cycle and look for Leidsplein where Crea was organising a documentary show 'The Power of Nightmares'. I arrived late and found my way through a smoke-filled bar to a dingy room where the figure of Sayyid Qutb stared at me from the big screen. The docu, let me tell you, is a famous one, made by BBC journo Adam Curtis and draws a parallel between the rise of neo-conservatives in the US and radical Islamism in the Arab world.

So who is this Sayyid Qutb?

He was an Egyptian who belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood, a leading intellectual who wrote several books on radical Islamism (an ideology which states that Islam is not solely a religion but also a set of political ideologies which have to be played out in the political arena) which were to later inspire many, including Osama Bin Laden's mentor and Egyptian Islamic Jihad member Ayman Zawahiri.

Sayyid Qutb (Source: Internet)

The documentary traces Qutb's disillusionment with the sexual permissiveness and liberal ideas of the American society, where he studied for a short period of time. Returning back, he endured torture and finally murder for his radical ideas. Even torture could not change him, so he must have been pretty convinced about what he wrote!?



This religious fundamentalism is then shifted to the US, where almost simultaneously, another group of radicals were taking shape – neoconservatives – inspired by the ideas of Leo Strauss, a German-born Jewish philosopher who taught political science in the University of Chicago (sounds so innocent and harmless!)

Leo Strauss (Source: Internet)

So what was Leo Strauss teaching his devoted students?



He, like Qutb, says Curtis, was disillusioned with liberalism and the consequent relativism which created a value-free hedonism in the American society. Curtis traces the development of neo conservative ideas (refer to NeoCon Duet) to Strauss. Straussian Harvey C Mansfield, who would lead the likes of neoconservatives Irving Kristol, one of Strauss's students Paul Wolfowitz, are a few of those influenced by Strauss's controversial political ideas. The gist of his ideas, if I understood it correctly, was that liberalism produced authoritarainism; this thought naturally led, as some accuse, to imperialist militarism and Christian fundamentalism as alternatives. Dangerous!



Well, Curtis had a knack for connecting the two together. It fascinated and frightened me (It gives you, if you are a religious Chrisitian or a Muslim, this creepy feeling that you are next in line to becoming a terrorist) – to watch the power of logic, the power of religious thought – both good in themselves – to be perverted enough to bring the world to where it is now: the neoconservatives in power in the US and the Islamists in the Arab world – both now party to the violence in Iraq and elsewhere.


Imagine all this from an author (Qutb) and a professor (Strauss)!