Here’s a terrific piece by Dinesh D’Souza, on the ideological foundations of radical Islam and the need for a solid Western response: America he saw was a perfectly pagan place. (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)

D’Souza uses the writings of Sayyid Qutb, who has been called “the brains behind Bin Laden,” as the foil for his argument:

How in Qutb’s view did America reach its sorry state? One problem, Qutb said, is that American and indeed Western institutions are fundamentally atheist, based on a clear rejection of divine authority.

Democracy and capitalism are in Qutb’s view atheistic ideas. When democrats say that sovereignty flows from the people, this means that the people, not God, are the rulers. So democracy is a form of idol worship. So, too, Qutb insisted that capitalism, which is based on the notion that the market and not God is the best arbitrator of value, is a form of idolatry.

A second problem, Qutb wrote, is that the core principle of America is liberty — the right to determine one’s own destiny. This, he argued, is a highly defective principle because liberty can be used well or liberty can be used badly.

Given what Immanuel Kant called “the warped timber of humanity,” given the human propensity for selfishness and vice, Qutb argued that freedom will often be used badly.

For evidence of this, he said, just look at what goes on in America. Qutb pointed to divorce, family breakdown, homosexuality, promiscuity and the triviality and vulgarity of American popular culture as proof that human beings cannot be expected to use freedom except to gratify their basest impulses. Indeed, Qutb sternly charged that America is materially prosperous but morally rotten.

Qutb’s alternative to America and the West is Islam, which in his book “Social Justice in Islam” he terms “an unparalleled revolution in human thinking” that provides the only solution to “this unhappy, perplexed and weary world.”

Islam, Qutb emphasized, is not merely a moral code or set of beliefs. It is a way of life based upon the divine government of the universe. The very term “Islam” means “submission” to the authority of Allah. This worldview requires that religious, economic, political and civil society be based on the Koran, the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad and the Shariah or Islamic law.

Qutb admits that notions of submission and obedience may sound alien to Western ears. In his view, this is because Western society is based on freedom, whereas Islamic society is based on virtue.

Read it all.