Much has been written about the famous Egyptian Islamist ideologue Sayyid Qutb (1906–66) over the past decades, including books by Ahmad S. Moussalli (Radical Islamic Fundamentalism: The Ideological and Political Discourse of Sayyid Qutb [Beirut: AUB Press, 1993], William Shepard (Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism: A Translation and Critical Analysis of Social Justice in Islam [Leiden: Brill, 1996]), Adnan A. Musallam (From Secularism to Jihad: Sayyid Qutb and the Foundations of Radical Islamism [Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2005]), Sayed Khatab (The Political Thought of Sayyid Qutb: The Theory of Jahiliyya and The Power of Sovereignty: The Political and Ideological Philosophy of Sayyid Qutb [both New York: Routledge, 2006]), and John Calvert (Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism [New York: Columbia University Press, 2010]), as well as many articles by the same authors and others. Most courses on modern Islam at universities around the world include Qutb, and published overviews of Islamism in the 20th century are certain to mention him. All of this makes one wonder what another book could add to our knowledge on Qutb. At the same time, it is clear that beyond the circle of scholars of the Middle East and Islam, Qutb is still too often believed to be the man almost single-handedly responsible for the radical ideology behind al-Qaʿida and the terrorist attacks of 9/11, suggesting that information on Qutb aimed at a broader audience is apparently needed. It is precisely this point—popular ignorance about Sayyid Qutb's life, ideology, and contribution to radical Islam—that James Toth, an American anthropologist based at New York University in Abu Dhabi, seeks to address in this book.

In an attempt to counter what he sees as distorted views of Qutb's ideology by writers like Paul Berman, Toth strives to “find what is worthwhile in [Qutb's] ideas . . . determine their impact, give him a fair and balanced assessment, regard him like other ideologues who inspire revolutions . . . and explain what may appear unintelligible” (p. 4). Toth describes “Sayyid Qutb's vision of Islam” as “a powerful social movement” and hence uses “a social movement framework” because it allows him “to examine the perspective of the participants [in the movement] without in any way judging or evaluating the movement and its goals” (pp. 6–7). While others have focused on Qutb's major publications, his biography, or “a set of important concepts that Qutb emphasized,” Toth's book “use[s] all of these methods in understanding Qutb's critical contribution to the Islamic movement” (p. 10).

The latter point is certainly correct: Toth focuses on both Qutb's life and his ideological legacy—as the title of the book suggests—and he regularly deals with Qutb's most prominent publications as well as their key concepts, as is evident from the book's layout. In Part 1 of the book, Toth describes Qutb's childhood, education, and career as a literary critic (Chapter 1), his gradual shift towards Islamism (Chapters 3–4), and the radical Islamism for which Qutb is best known (Chapter 5). Part 2 focuses on Qutb's legacy through an analysis of his general ideas about Islam (Chapter 6), the important concepts of jāhiliyya (the pre-Islamic period of ignorance that Qutb believed the contemporary Muslim world also lived in), ḥākimiyya (sovereignty), and jihad. Toth then continues with Qutb's ideas on Islamic society, the Islamic economy, and the Islamic state (Chapters 8–10, respectively), ending with Qutb's perception of Islamic history, followed by an epilogue that discusses various Egyptian movements inspired by Qutb's ideas. Also included in the book are several appendices covering the dramatis personae as well as overviews of Qutb's ideas on women and the family, the “People of the Book,” and apologetics.

While Toth takes the broad approach that he promises the reader in his introduction, he is less successful in his attempt to use a “social movement framework” to counter distorted views of Qutb and his legacy. Apart from the fact that it is rather puzzling how Qutb's “vision of Islam” can be seen as a social movement, Toth does not actually apply social movement theory (SMT) in his book, despite dedicating several pages of the introduction to explaining why it constitutes such a good approach. If leaving SMT out was done on purpose to broaden the appeal of the book, perhaps Toth should not have mentioned it in his introduction. As it is, the author raises expectations that he does not live up to, which is frustrating to scholarly readers interested in this aspect. Similarly frustrating is Toth's frequent use of the word “Kharijite” (see, for example, pp. 70–71) to describe Qutb's thinking. Those familiar with Islamist discourse know that the term “Kharijite” refers to the early Islamic Khawarij, a group that is said to have split off from the fourth caliph ʿAli b. Abi Talib (r. 656–61) and his army and developed extremist ideas on takfīr (excommunication of other Muslims). The label “Kharijite” is often applied to radical Islamists by their opponents to paint them as zealous and extremist murderers, as Jeffrey Kenney's work has shown. As I have pointed out elsewhere, labeling modern-day radical Muslims as Khawarij may be an effective way to discredit and slander them, but from a theological (not to mention historical) perspective, the comparison is incorrect. This makes it quite strange that Toth, whose goal is precisely to debunk such wild accusations, applies this term to Qutb's ideas.

A more important problem with Toth's book from an academic point of view is that it makes very little use of primary sources, instead retelling a story that has been told several times before in English-language books and articles by authors such as those mentioned above. Further, although Toth has spent much time in Egypt and knows the country very well, he does not seem to have done fieldwork specifically for this project, which gives one the impression that the book grew out of his earlier work rather than constituting a serious research project in its own right, a point that Toth seems to confirm in the preface (p. ix).

None of this means, however, that Toth's book is a bad one. It is very well written and nicely structured, making it a pleasant read. Moreover, unlike other works on Qutb that focus mostly on biography (Musallam, Calvert) or ideas (Mousalli, Shepard, Khatab), Toth gives a very broad, yet detailed overview of Qutb's life and ideology, ensuring that he does indeed demystify his subject—as he set out to do—by showing Qutb's development over the course of his life. Furthermore, although Toth makes little use of primary sources, he should be credited with digging up an impressive range of secondary sources—including some rarely used ones—that, while not focusing directly on Qutb, offer some interesting insights into the book's subject, particularly the often highly contentious period of the 1930s during which Qutb was a poet and literary critic. Toth's analysis of the Egyptian intellectual and literary milieu is quite interesting and, despite his reliance on secondary sources, will offer new information to many.

Given the fact that Toth's book does not exactly live up to its own promises and offers little new information or insights to specialists of Qutb and radical Islam in Egypt, the book cannot be said to be a significant contribution to the literature from a scholarly point of view. For those (relatively) new to the subject of Sayyid Qutb, however, the book's comprehensive approach (supported even further by the appendices), clear structure, and pleasant style of writing ensure that it will serve as a very good introduction to Qutb's life and ideology. So while scholars familiar with the subject will be better off with Khatab or Calvert, nonexperts—who may have been Toth's target audience all along—may find no book better to start with than this one.