Mustafa Mahmoud
Mustafa Kamal Mahmoud Hussein (; December 27, 1921 – 31 October 2009) commonly known as Mustafa Mahmoud () was an Egyptian doctor, philosopher, and author. Mustafa was born in Shibin el-Kom, Monufia province, Egypt. He was trained as a doctor, but later chose a career as a journalist and author, traveling and writing on many subjects. He wrote 89 books on science, philosophy, religion, politics and society as well as plays, tales, and travelogues. He is also known for his popular program (""). Mustafa also founded a mosque, a medical clinic and a charitable organisation which were all named after him . In 1963, he wrote "The Earthquake," a play criticizing the Gamal Abdel Nasser regime. Years later, it was released in theaters and starred actor Salah Zulfikar in 1990. Biography. The material in this section is derived from self-published information by the subject. Early life. Mustafa Mahmoud was raised in a middle-class family, his father was employed as a secretary in the province of El Gharbiyya. In elementary school, he struggled in class failing to graduate in three consecutive years. One of his teachers is said to have abused him physically which affected his learning and made him drop  out of school for a while. He also got ill often and was restricted from playing with other children. Being introverted in nature Mustafa spent his early days immersed in imagination and dreams. He dreamed of being a great inventor, explorer or famous scientist with his role models being Christopher Columbus, Edison, Marconi and Pasteur. Medical studies. Mustafa Mahmud chose medicine as a field of study. In his third year of studies he was admitted into hospital for three years of treatment. He describes this long isolation as a positive contribution to the development of his character, when he could  indulge himself totally to reading and thinking of literary works. In these three years, the meditative character was fashioned within himself, and thus the writer was born. After his recovery, he resumed his medical studies and says that he subsequently realized an immense change within himself. He discovered within himself the artist who reflects, reads, and peruses regularly the major sources of literature, plays, and novels. Owing to this new activity, (which in no time he became an expert at), he began to write regularly to the newspapers, (in his final year of medicine). Accordingly, he had to intensify his  effort to graduate and attain success. He started writing for El Tahrir and Rose El Yusef magazines. Due to his illness he graduated two or three years after his colleagues, in 1953. His journeys. Mustafa Mahmud describes his frequent travels, starting with his journeys to the Tropics in Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, and the south of Sudan, where he stayed for two months with the tribe of Niam Niam. Thereafter, he traveled to the Sahara Desert, to the oasis of Ghadamis, where he stayed for a month with the tribe of El Tawariq. Furthermore, he traveled to many capitals of European  and American countries, such as: Italy, Germany, Greece, France, Canada and the United States; and to the Arab countries, beginning with Morocco and Algeria in the west; and ending with Lebanon, Syria and Saudi Arabia in the east. There was another journey, one within himself; he boarded the "ship" of science, knowledge, and religion (starting from the Indian Fideism, Zoroaster, Buddha; and ending with Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad. Finally he found his comfort and himself in the Qur'an. Thus he concluded his traveling, and devoted himself totally to reflection and contemplation. He lived among the jurists, scholars, and Sufis, and  found that the Qur'an is an ocean around which all the branches of knowledge gather together. He wrote five books criticizing the Marxist thought: "Islamic left Fib"; "Marxism and Islam"; "Leftism Collapse"; "Why Did I Refuse Marxism?"; and "The Antichrist". He was persuaded that Marxism was one of the pickaxes which destroyed the current civilization; at worst, it was an instrument that caused the creation of a spiteful, negative and rejecting character. He has seventy-five books published, six of them were adapted for stage: ("Earthquake"; "Man and Shade"; "The Great Alexander"; "The Social Gang (Shilla-t 'Uns)"; "Blood Odor ; The Devil Lives in our House"), one of them ("The Impossible") was presented as a film; twenty-five books deal with Islamic subjects; and the rest consists of studies and short stories. TV presented for him more than four hundred episodes of the program "Science and Faith", in which the movie, scientific substance and Sufi meditation guide us to the faith in God. In the year 1960 he left his medical career, devoting himself totally to writing for newspapers. As a physician, moving from one hospital to another (particularly, among the Hospitals of Chest Diseases in Abbasiyya, Chest diseases in  'Almazha, Chest diseases in Dumyat, and the dispensary of Umm el-Masriyyeen), between the years 1953 and 1960, all had a great influence on his writings, principally: Storehouse No. 7 (`Anbar 7), the Social Gang (Shilla-t 'Uns), and Eating Bread (Akl-`Aysh). In the meantime, it had an influence on his scientific and anatomical access to the public adversities, to the human soul and to the characters he dealt with in all his writings. Another character who had a profound effect on him was his father, whose long-time illness, patience, faith, and pure innate nature remained in his  mind throughout his life. As he grew older and encountered life's affairs in his thirties, a woman played a great role in and had an effectual control on his life, as a friend, a dialogist, and a lover. His faults were always due to losing control of himself when he looked at any beautiful things. Above all, he believed that no man is a perfect one unless he has found a woman to love, to marry, to have children with, and to feel parenthood and establish a family. Marriage. Mustafa Mahmud says that his first marriage in 1961 was  not successful, though from it, he was endowed with a girl and a boy, Amal and Adham. The marriage ended in 1973. His second marriage in 1983 was also unsuccessful and ended in 1987. The reasons behind these divorces were the passion of writing that controlled his life, his preoccupation with his work and finally his isolation.