[hermit22]

Again: wow. Have you ever read any Qutb? Go pick up Signposts. It's an informative look inside a way of thinking; much like Das Kapital or Mein Kampf was about their respective ideologies.

Qutb was about social commentary. Along with al-Banna, he was about the ulama being corrupt, and distorting the law of the Quran. I doubt you'll find the word "jihad" in any of Qutb's works; especially in the sense of Lesser Jihad that bin laden (erroneously, according to most Islamic scholars) uses.

When people see social injustice, they respond in different ways. Often, a certain group is villified: Qutb and bin Laden both demonize the West. Qutb, however, believed that the way to social reform was to educate the masses through Islam. His ideas were, in many ways, like the Protestant Reformation. The ulama was in charge of religious rulings, much like the Catholic church, and he believed they had spent so much time analyzing and liberalizing Islam that they had complicated what, to him, was a simple religion. He believed that the religion had to be spread, and the best way to do that was to help the masses through charity. bin Laden, on the other hand, thinks that the best way is through terror. But he still retains the "society is corrupt" ideals. No matter what his prescriptions for it may be, his social commentary remains intact as social commentary.

And back to this damn fascism argument. Have you gone and looked it up yet? Fascism is a social movement, with nationalist overtones. Nasserism could be considered fascism. But bin Laden is on the complete opposite end of the spectrum from Nasser. To put the two anywhere near each other is just ridiculous.

So not only do you use a term of a high perjorative nature; you continuously use it incorrectly. That's all I'm concerned about. Quit trying to read everything from a normative sense. Don't pass judgement on it before going in; rather, analyze the content of it. You'll find that Qutb, bin Laden, Marx, etc. make some good observations about society. It is in their prescriptions that they fail; it is the prescriptions that the media sees; and the prescriptions that temper our bias.