Sayyid Qutb, an Islamic activist in Egypt, was executed by the Egyptian government in 1966 for opposing that country’s secular government. He has influenced many of today’s radical Islamists. He is quoted as saying:

“But Christianity cannot be reckoned as a real force in opposition to the philosophies of the new materialism; it is an individualist, isolationist, negative faith. It has no power to make life grow under its influence in any permanent or positive way.”

Qutb lived in the United States in the late 1940’s and attended school at Colorado State College (now the University of Northern Colorado). Reportedly of a puritanical nature, those years turned him against both the West and Christianity, which he equated as the same. He saw Christianity as an individualistic religion, powerless against the materialism of the West.

Qutb was in error, seeing Christianity only through the eyes of a post World War II university society. Though Christians have certainly influenced Western nations, the religion of Jesus is not the same as our Western culture.

In contrast to today’s individualism, which so entraps many American Christians, the early Christians created community. They needed community in order to survive. Their love for each other drew pagans to them. Their lives indeed grew in permanent, positive ways, as did the societies they occasionally influenced.