For the Ladies

Between 1948 and 1951, Sayyid Qutb was in the US, and his reflections on this experience, published as Signposts , has been called the “key text of the jihadist movement.” One of the things that particularly frightened Qutb was the freedom of American women, and the comparatively casual relations between men and women. If Islam was to be saved, female chastity and subordination had to be protected against the solvents of American popular culture.

For us, it’s the war on terror; for them, it’s the war against Sex and the City .