Birth: NULL/NULL/1936 Death:NULL/NULL/NULL
Born in Jerusalem in 1936 to a Christian family originally from Nazareth; majored in Philosophy, Political Science and Psychology; was a Marxist in the 1950s; was arrested in 1957 and imprisoned for 10 years for his activism with the Communist Party (CP); while in prison, was the chief ideologue of the CP; became a member of the DFLP in its early times; after his release, joined Fateh and established with his brother-in-law Naji Alloush a democratic front representing the Marxist stream within Fateh; converted to Islam in 1980/81 under the influence of the Islamic revolution in Iran and of a fellow Marxist, French philosopher Roger Garaudy; worked with the PLO in Tunisia in the early 1980s, among others as head of the Fateh Planning Center; served as Sec.-Gen. of the Sudanese People’s Convention at some time; later abjured nationalism and Marxism, and became an Islamist intellectual and thinker on Arab-Islamic affairs; was involved with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and in recent years, is considered one of the chief ideologues of Hamas; has authored several, mostly ideological, books on issue related to Palestinian revolution, Arab unity and Islamic thought; in 1998, has called for a rethinking of ideology and practice, promoting guerrilla warfare rather than terrorism and fighting against the army and not civilians in confronting occupation; lived in Lebanon and Amman; has a column in Al-Sabeel (the organ of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood) and Filastin Al-Muslimah (Muslim Palestine); among his publications are Islam and the Battle for Civilization, The New Global System and the Confrontation Option.
