fought and overthrown—came from a fatwa of Ibn Taymiya. (Quran 5:44: "... and those who do not judge by what Allah has revealed are ˹truly˺ the disbelievers.") Non-Islamic Qutb's intense dislike of the West and ethnic nationalism notwithstanding, some of his ideas have been compared to European fascism (with religion replacing race or ethnicity in its ideology), such as: the decline of contemporary Western civilization and "infertility" of democracy; inspiration from an earlier golden age and desire to restore its glory with an all-encompassing (totalitarian) social, political, and economic system; belief in malice of foreign and (especially) Jewish conspiracies; violent revolution to expel alien influences and to re-establish the power and international supremacy of the nation/community; Although fascism made some impact among anti-British Arab Muslims before, during, and after World War II, the influence of fascist thinkers (particularly French fascist Alexis Carrel) in Qutb's work is disputed. The centrality of an Islamic 'vanguard' (Arabic: tali'a) in Qutb's political program also suggests influence from Communist leader Vladimir I. Lenin's key concept of the vanguard party. Criticism Qutb's book was originally a bestseller and became more popular as the Islamic revival strengthened. Islamists have hailed him as "a matchless writer, ... one of the greatest thinkers of contemporary Islamic thought," and compared to Western political philosopher John Locke. Egyptian intellectual Tariq al-Bishri has compared the influence of Milestones to Vladimir Lenin's pamphlet What Is To Be Done?, where the founder of modern Communism outlined his theories of how Communism would be different from socialism. Author Gilles Kepel credits Milestones with "unmasking" the socialist and "nominally" Islamic "faces" of the Egyptian regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser Qutb lived under. Outside the Islamist context, however, Ma'alim fi-l-Tariq has been criticized by Muslims for the takfir of allegedly jahili Muslims, and by non-Muslims for its accusations against them. Takfir The claim that the entire world was jahiliyya meant that mainstream Muslims were not actually Muslims, which meant they were potentially guilty of apostasy, a capital crime in traditional sharia. Critics allege that Qutb's Milestones helped to open up a Pandora's box of takfir (by declaring that the Muslim world was actually non-Muslim and so many Muslims not actually Muslims, and potentially guilty of apostasy) that has brought serious internal strife, in particular terrorism and the killing of civilians, to the Muslim world in recent decades. Christians and Jews as Polytheists Qutb repeatedly proclaims that "serving