ABSTRACT
Qutb’s views, which undoubtedly reflect prevailing fundamentalist doctrine, express more than simply an emotionalized Islamic variant of the Protocols of Zion. The return to early Islam and the ethos of jihad is part of the fundamentalist attempt to revitalize what they perceive as a Muslim culture and way of life threatened by decline and even collapse. The dimension is explored in Ronald Nettler’s Past Trials and Present Tribulations, a valuable essay on modern Islamic fundamentalist doctrine dealing with the Jews. The liberation of Jerusalem, to be sure, depends for the fundamentalists on the overcoming of apostasy, and the return to the Koran and to the principles of Islam. There can be no salvation for the Arabs until the source of their decline – the impact of secularism, modernism, and westernization – is uprooted from their midst. Fundamentalist views of Zionism and the Jews have increasingly taken root in the Middle East in recent years.
