Uniting Heaven and Earth

Sayyid Qutb was an Egyptian executed for treason in 1966 and is recognized as the most influential intellectual among the warriors of Islamic jihad. His brother Mohammed was a teacher of Osama Bin Laden and his texts are read by martyrs in training camps and madrassas across the Muslim world. The hope that consumed Sayyid Qutb’s life was to restore the Muslim caliphate and to establish God’s law throughout the Islamic umma and the infidel world
In shaping his vision, Sayyid Qutb condemned the Christian effort to separate the realm of the sacred from the realm of the profane, God’s world from Ceasar’s. He called this division a “hideous schizophrenia.” Christians created liberal societies, Qutb explained, in which “God’s existence is not denied, but His domain is restricted to the heavens and His rule on earth is suspended.” Islam’s task was “to unite the world and the faith.” To heal the wound in creation by establishing one world under Islamic law
Qutb wrote these words in one of his most famous texts, which he called Social Justice In Islam. The mission of Islam, he wrote, was “to unite heaven and earth in a single system.” This, in essence, is the totalitarian idea.. It is the goal of radical jihad and the mission that burned the towers of evil in Manhattan; it is, the cause Mohammed Atta served