Milestones

Author: Sayyid Qutb
Publisher: Millat Book Centre
Pages: 160
Binding: Softcover
ISBN:  81-7231-244-x 

About the Book: Qutb (1906-1966) was an Egyptian government bureaucrat, author, literary critic and finally an Islamic political leader, but is most famous as an Islamist theoretician. He grew up in British-occupied Egypt and was imprisoned and executed in Nasser’s independent Egypt. Though he came from a pious rural background, he studied Western literature extensively and wrote literary criticism as well as poetry, short stories and articles. Qutb spent two years in America (which he loathed) and came back a determined fundamentalist. He became one of the leading members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the first and largest mass Islamist group. After the Brotherhood fell out with the ruling Arab nationalists in Egypt and an attempt was made on the life of president Gamal Abdul Nasser, the nationalists’ leader, Qutb was imprisoned. 10 years later, accused of another plot against the government, he was hanged. Qutb wrote many books, but his most famous and widely read by far is Milestones, generally considered one of, if not the most influential Islamist tract ever written. Milestones (Ma’alim ‘ala Al-Tariq), was an immediate best seller and is said to have been published in close to 2,000 editions.