An Egyptian writer, who was considered one of the symbols of the Egyptian left, and an intellectual who enriched Egyptian and Arab cultural life with a number of books on literature, culture, and history, the most prominent of which is his famous book The Right and the Left in Islam, which caused controversy after its publication in the seventies, and was one of the first books on political Islam. He worked throughout the nineties as a writer for the Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper. Among his cinematic work are the movies The Beggar, and The City's Lost Souls. He died in 2006.