Rolf Potts on “The Tourist Who Influenced the Terrorists”
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 10.04.06 | 7:12 AM ET
The new issue of The Believer features a story by World Hum contributor Rolf Potts about Sayyid Qutb, whose Islamist writings influenced Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden and their followers. Potts looks at Qutb, who spent part of the late 1940s studying in Colorado, through the lens of travel. “Considering that Qutb’s rejection of Western values was informed by such a willfully cartoonish misinterpretation of American culture,” Potts writes on his weblog, “it’s natural to wonder how his beliefs might have been tempered had he been a more engaged traveler.” Unfortunately, only a piece of the Believer story is available online.
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
