Qutb and Hitler

When reading Qutb’s tirade on jihad, I realized that he was the kind of closed-minded individual that causes the largest problems in the world today. I found his writing particularly offensive because he seems to believe that he is the perfect person and has the right answers for everything. Normally this would not peeve me so much, but he claims that he has his rights because of the God he believes in. At that point, I lost faith in a logical argument coming from his writings. When Hitler persuaded his armies to kill people as they did, he used what the Nazis believed were sound arguments based on somewhat factual observations. Being scientifically minded, it can be hard to refute them with anything but, “its just wrong.” However, in Qutb’s piece he claims to receive permission to kill people from God. This claim is ridiculous. There is some amount of religious violence I can understand. I recently read an article were a missionary had gone to Africa to “spread the word of God” and they were killed for their beliefs early on. While I do not condone it, I can understand a person killing to protect themselves from what they believe is religious treachery. However, Qutb claims that a person does not have to even try to force their views upon you for violence to occur. Qutb believes that it is the right of muslims to be able to kill anyone who does not believe the same things that they do. The part that makes me angry with Qutb is that he does not base his argument in anything solid. He believes that God told him killing was okay and that he wanted every non-muslim dead. At least Hitler attempted to hide and deceive people with vague scientific and economic data.