The political theory of Sayyid Qutb

Sayyid Qutb represents one of the 20 th. century’s most controversial intellectual figures in the Arab world; his portray was painted in totally different colors by his adversaries and his followers. Throughout his intellectual odyssey, starting off as a literary critic under Western cultural influence and ending up as a political thinker with Islamic credentials, he produced numerous books and articles that charted his discursive shifts. This work constitutes an attempt to dig out Qutb’s art of political theorization embedded in his oeuvre by applying Foucaultian discourse analysis to reconstruct the context, structure, and dynamics of Qutb’s theatrical discourse during his Islamic turn.