They had no modern armies, few sympathetic representatives abroad. Arab intellectuals debated the correct response to such a catastrophic betrayal: nationalism or Islamism, democracy or authoritarianism, pro-Western or anti. The Arab thinker from this general era that Americans may know today is, again, Sayyid Qutb; after September 11, his texts were pored over to understand Muslim fundamentalism, the hidden strain of Arab life that explained everything.
