What he discusses...

What he discusses, instead, is the alleged "darker side of Jewish life under Islam, which redefined the erstwhile conception of Islamic `toleration' as having been more problematic than could before have been imagined." [^28] With no historical evidence in hand, the writer rushes to prove the "evil Muslim treatment of the Jews." [^29] Nettler aims at proving his thesis of "Muslim animosity to Jews" by treating some of the works of the leading Egyptian Muslim thinker, Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966).

He uncritically accepts Wilfred Cantwell Smith's argument that "the modern period of Islamic history... begins with decadence within, intrusion and menace without; and the worldly glory that reputedly went with obedience to God's law only a distant memory of happier days."3o He argues, in an absolute manner, that the West has nothing to do, directly or indirectly, with the "decline" of Islam in the modern world. Yet, Modern Islam, in the writer's view, suffers from a fundamental malaise.

The only justifiable explanation, then, has to be sought within the Islamic religion. Nettler proposes that the leaders of modern Islamic resurgence, and in particular Sayyid Qutb, propogated an "emotional hatred which [is] uniquely modern as part of Muslim thinking on the Jews." [^31] To him, this supposed Muslim hatred is a metaphysical a priori; it is fixed, absolute, and unchanging, and beyond the rules of history.

Nettler does not treat Qutb's ideas in their totality as a comprehensive dynamic. Instead, he singles out one dimension of his thought: his stand on Zionism and the State of Israel. [^32] To better understand Qutb's ideas, one has to relate them to the influence of foreign powers on the leading Egyptian intelligentsia of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. Early in his professional career as a man of letters in the late thirties, Qutb wrote a number of articles on colonialism and Westernization.

He linked these two phenomena to the British attempt to create a state for the Jews in Palestine. Nettler does not refer to these significant phases in the history of the Middle East: colonialism and the creation of Israel. He treats the Qutbian "doctrine of hatred towards the Jews" in an absolute political, and historical vacuum.

Qutb's philosophy, which is succinctly summarized in his main works, Social Justice in Islam, [^33]and Islam and the Battle between Islam and Capitalism, [^34]placed him at the center of Egyptian intellectual life during that period.