Abdel Wahab Elmessiri

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Abdel-Wahab Elmessiri (Arabic: عبد الوهاب المسيري‎, born 1938) is an Egyptian scholar, author, and a University Professor. Elmessiri was born in Damanhur, Egypt, graduated with a BA in English literature from Alexandria University in 1959. He received MA in English and comparative literature from Columbia University in 1964 and a PhD in the same field from Rutgers University in 1969. He is 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 as a visiting Professor at the International Islamic University Malaysia. He is considered as one of Egypt's most famous thinkers. ElMessiri is also very well-knwon among the Arab scholars.

Elmessiri major areas of research include: Jews, Judaism and Zionism; secularism and prejudice; Western culture and contemporaneity; modernism and postmodernism; literary theory and comparative literature. His thought was changed from western secularism to a modern islamic vision. Elmessiri has written several articles about his ideas, including "Chosen Community, an Exceptional Burden", "A People Like Any other". He has also written for children.[1].

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 considered as one of the most authentic works in the field. This work, published in 1999 by Dar El Shorouk, Cairo, was the culmination of around 30 years of research.

[edit] English language publications

"Israel, Base of Western Imperialism" (Committee of Supporting Middle East Liberation, New York, 1969)
A Lover from Palestine and Other Poems (Palestine Information Office, Washington D.C., 1972)
Israel and South Africa: The Progression of a Relationship (North American, New Brunswick, N.J., 1976; second edition 1977; third edition, 1980; Arabic translation, 1980)
The Land of Promise: A Critique of Political Zionism (North American, New Brunswick, N.J., 1977)
Three Studies in English Literature (North American, New Brunswick, N.J., 1979)
The Palestinian Wedding: A Bilingual Anthology of Contemporary Palestinian Resistance Poetry [editor] (Three Continents Press, Washington D.C., 1983)
A Land of Stone and Thyme: Palestinian Short Stories [co-editor] (Quartet, London, 1996)
"Epistemological Bias in the Social and Physical Sciences" (International Institute of Islamic Thought, London - Washington, 2006)