If the Sheikh thought little of jihadis’ Islamic credentials, jihad’s ideologues were similarly dismissive of madrasa scholars. It was the ulama, they charged, who wanted what the West had: a religion as privatized and part-time as Christianity had been ever since the Enlightenment. Traditional Islamic scholars were simply “defeated people,” charged Sayyid Qutb. “They have adopted the Western concept of ‘religion,’ which is merely a name for ‘belief in the heart,’ having no relation to the practical affairs of life.”
