Change in thinking

From The Looming Tower, in the chapter, "The Founder:"

At that moment Mohammed Qutb was jealously defending his brother's reputation, which was under attack from moderate Islamists. They contended that Milestones had empowered a new, more violent group of radicals, especially in Egypt, who used Sayyid Qutb's writings to justify attacks on anyone they considered an infidel, including other Muslims. Foremost among Qutb's critics was Hasan Hudaybi, the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brothers, who published his own prison book, Preachers Not Judges, to counter Qutb's seductive call to chaos. In Hudaybi's far more orthodox theology, no Muslim could deny the belief of another so long as he made the simple profession of faith: "There is no God but God, and Mohammed is His messenger." The debate, which had been born in the Egyptian prisons with Qutb and Hudaybi, was quickly spreading throughout Islam, as young Muslims tood sides in this argument about who is a Muslim and who is not. "Osama read Judaybi's book in 1978, and we talked about it," Jamaal Khalifa recalled. "Osama agreed with him completely." His views would soon change, however, and it was this fundamental shift -- from Hudabi's tolerant and accepting view of Islam to Qutb's narrow and judgmental one --- that would open the door to terror.

Fascinating book. Although much of the information has been around for a while, Lawrence Wright captures it all in a riveting narrative, beginning with Qutb's post-war stay in the United States and his subsequent prison terms in Nasser's Egypt. In Qutb's philosophy, only Islam and The Quran offer the complete system -- one that regulated law, government, diet, marriage, and on and on -- to save humanity from the decadence of the West.