Looks at the life and philosophy of Sayyid Qutb, dubbed 'the godfather ideologue of al-Qaeda'. The modern political idea of "jihad" - as a violent struggle against corrupt or anti-islamic regimes - is essentially the brainchild of one man who turned traditional islamic percepts inside out and created radical political islam. Using the evolution of Egyptian thinker Sayyid Qutb's life and writings, Musallam traces and analyses Qutb's alienation and subsequent emergence as an independent Islamist within the context of his society and the problems that it faced. A secular man of letters in the 1930s and 1940s, Qutb's outlook and focus on Qur'anic studies underwent drastic changes during World War II. Radicalized following his stay in the United States in the late 1940s and during his imprisonment from 1954 to 1964, Qutb penned controversial writings which would have a significant impact on young Islamists in Egypt for decades following his death and on global jihadist Islamists for the past quarter century. Since September 11, 2001, the West has dubbed Qutb "the philosopher of Islamic terror and godfather ideologue of al-Qaeda." The first book to examine Qutb's life and thought in the wake of the events that ignited the "War on Terrorism." The first biography of Qutb in English for a general reader. This book provides a portrait of the father of radical political islam. It analyses how an intellectual becomes radicalised.