Revolt Against Civilisation
12th May 2015
No one who reads Seyyid Qutb’s book Milestones could be in any doubt that the destruction of ancient monuments by ISIS or the Taliban is perfectly in keeping with Islamist thought. Milestones is an important book not because of its merits, either intellectual or literary, but because of its influence. It was one of the founding texts of modern Islamic fundamentalism (if that is not an oxymoron) and is worth studying not for itself but for the light it sheds on a certain mentality, namely that of Moslems who believe themselves in possession of the highest truth yet find themselves permanently sunk in moral, economic and social squalor.