Abdel Wahab El-Messiri

Abdel-Wahab Elmessiri ( , 1938 -July 2, 2008) was an Egyptian scholar , author and general coordinator of the opposition organization Kefaya . Elmessiri was born in Damanhur , Egypt, graduated with a BA in English literature from Alexandria University in 1959. He received a MA in English and comparative literature from Columbia University in 1964 and a PhD in the same field from Rutgers University in 1969. He was professor emeritus of English and comparative literature at Ain Shams University , Egypt since 1988. He was also a University Professor at King Saud University , Saudi Arabia (1983-1988) and at Kuwait University , Kuwait (1988-1989) and a visiting Professor at the International Islamic University Malaysia . He is considered as one of Egypt's most famous thinkers and very well-known among Arab scholars. Elmessiri's major areas of research included: Jews , Judaism and Zionism ; secularism and prejudice; Western culture and contemporaneity; modernism and postmodernism ; literary theory and comparative literature . Over the course of his life his outlook moved from western secularism to a modern islamic vision. Elmessiri wrote several articles about his ideas, including "Chosen Community, an Exceptional Burden", "A People Like Any other". He has also written for children. His eight-volume Encyclopaedia of "Jews, Judaism and Zionism" (" موسوعة اليهود واليهودية والصهيونية: نموذج تفسيري جديد"), written in Arabic with an analytical/methodological form rather than an encyclopedic collection of information, is intended to depict Israel as an illegitimate country. Zionism is portrayed not as a national movement for self determination, but as a tool of colonialism. Though self described as a moderate Islamist, El Messeiri has on Al Jazeera contemptuously described Western civilization as genocidal (hadara ibadiya). On July 2, 2008 he died after a very long battle against cancer at the Palestine Hospital, Cairo .¹