John Calvert

“I had what we can call a “spiritual crisis,” a spontaneous awakening…. In my conscience it was a pure quest for God. Very simply. I am someone who asked himself existential questions, who told himself: “Here it is. I am forty years old, what have I done with my life? Where am I going?” Anxiety over death, anxiety over having lost something. (…) So I began this spiritual quest…. It is not so much my reading of Islamic or Islamist books which determined my action…but an internal logic which holds that Islam must lead to the imane [iman—“faith”], and the imane must go to the summit of ihsan [perfection], and the summit of ihsan is the jihad.101”
― John Calvert, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism

“were a purely biological matter.” He relates also how a nurse at the George Washington Hospital attempted to excite him by detailing the characteristics she desired her lovers to have. He draws a disapproving picture of the American woman’s seductive appearance (“thirsty lips…bulging breasts…smooth legs…”) and flirtatious demeanour (“the calling eye…the provocative laugh…”). He castigates Arab mission students who gave in to these wiles and dated American girls.35 Although Qutb meant his sharply”
― John Calvert, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism