The Full NPR Audio is HERE.
(NPR) …Qutb pointed out many things Americans take for granted as examples of the nation’s culture of greed — for example, the green lawns in front of homes in Greeley.
Ironically, Greeley in the middle of the 20th century was a very conservative town, where alcohol was illegal. It was a planned community, founded by Utopian idealists looking to make a garden out of the dry plains north of Denver using irrigation. The founding fathers of Greeley were by all reports temperate, religious and peaceful people.
But Qutb wasn’t convinced. “America in 1949 was not a natural fit for Qutb,” Siegel says. “He was a man of color, and the United States was still largely segregated. He was an Arab — American public opinion favored Israel, which had come into existence just a year before.”
In the college literary magazine, Qutb wrote of his disappointment:
“When we came here to appeal to England for our rights, the world helped England against the justice (sic). When we came here to appeal against Jews, the world helped the Jews against the justice. During the war between Arab and Jews, the world helped the Jews, too.”
Qutb wrote about Greeley in his book, The America I Have Seen. He offered a distorted chronology of American history: “He informed his Arab readers that it began with bloody wars against the Indians, which he claimed were still underway in 1949,” Siegel says. “He wrote that before independence, American colonists pushed Latinos south toward Central America — even though the American colonists themselves had not yet pushed west of the Mississippi… Then came the Revolution, which he called ‘a destructive war led by George Washington.'”
When it came to culture, Qutb denounced the primitive jazz music and loud clothing, the obsession with body image and perfection, and the bald sexuality. The American female was naturally a temptress, acting her part in a sexual system Qutb described as “biological”:
“The American girl is well acquainted with her body’s seductive capacity. She knows it lies in the face, and in expressive eyes, and thirsty lips. She knows seductiveness lies in the round breasts, the full buttocks, and in the shapely thighs, sleek legs — and she shows all this and does not hide it.”
Even an innocent dance in a church basement is proof of animalistic American sexuality:
“They danced to the tunes of the gramophone, and the dance floor was replete with tapping feet, enticing legs, arms wrapped around waists, lips pressed to lips, and chests pressed to chests. The atmosphere was full of desire…“
To Qutb, women were vixens, and men were sports-obsessed brutes: “This primitiveness can be seen in the spectacle of the fans as they follow a game of football… or watch boxing matches or bloody, monstrous wrestling matches… This spectacle leaves no room for doubt as to the primitiveness of the feelings of those who are enamored with muscular strength and desire it.”…
(see chapter one in The Looming Tower)
