In the mid-twentieth century, this militant revivalism found a new, more abstract and politicized expression in the novel and influential reading of Islam’s scriptures by Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian liberal literary critic turned Islamist. After an alleged Muslim Brotherhood assassination attempt against Egypt’s new president, Gamal Abd al-Nasser, in 1954 Qutb found himself in prison along with many other Muslim Brothers. Lingering in jail for over a decade, suffering from consumption and subjected to torture, Qutb scrawled ruminations on the Qur’an that would one day be published as the most
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