Ignorance/Jahiliyyah
By: Steve Waters
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: 2015
Place of publication: London]
Language: eng
Description: It is 1949 in small-town Colorado. A group of American students struggle to accept foreign student and Muslim Sayyid Qutb into their lives. Their unthinking behaviour will have terrible consequences that are to change world history. Qutb, disgusted by the hollowness of American society and what he deemed as its over sexualisation, would go on to become a major force in the Muslim Brotherhood in the 60s and 70s. He described the malaise at the heart of Western society as resembling 'jahiliyyah', which roughly translates as an ignorance of Godly values. In London, sixty years later, a university professor's work analysing those consequences takes on a frightening personal dimension when student Layla Ahmad walks into his office.
Notes: Previously issued in print: London: Nick Hern Books, 2012.