The death of the Egyptian leftist thinker Abdel Ghaffar Shukr

The Egyptian leftist thinker, Abdel Ghaffar Shukr, died on Sunday at the age of 85 after a busy political and intellectual life. His name was among the most prominent detainees for refusing to sign the peace treaty with Israel in 1979.

The National Council for Human Rights (official) said in a statement that it "mourns, in terms of sadness, the great thinker, the deceased of the homeland, Abdul Ghaffar Shukr, the (former) vice-chairman of the Council, who passed away on Sunday morning."

He added that he is "one of the national statures, and he has multiple intellectual contributions and diverse national opinions."

According to local media, hundreds of people attended the funeral of Shukr on Sunday evening, and then he was buried in his village in the north of the country.

Shukr was born on May 27, 1936, in the Dakahlia Governorate (north), and graduated from the Faculty of Arts, Cairo University in 1958.

Early on, he began his political career in his 17th year as a member and then a prominent leader in left-wing leading and ruling bodies in Egypt, where he joined the Editorial Board in 1953, then the National Union in 1958, and then the Socialist Union in 1963.

In 1964, Shukr became a trustee for education in the Socialist Youth Organization, one of the organs of the Socialist Union, and he belonged to the (secret) vanguard organization founded by the late President Gamal Abdel Nasser (ruled Egypt between 1956 and 1970).

In 1971, Shukr disagreed with the late President Muhammad Anwar Sadat (ruled between 1970 and 1981), and after 10 years, the leftist thinker was among the most prominent detainees on a list known to the media as the September 1981 arrests, for refusing to sign the peace agreement with Israel.

Politically, Shukr returned to the leadership of the leftist action as an agent of the founders of a new leftist party in 2011, which bore the name of the Socialist People's Alliance.

Shukr's research interests focused on issues of democratic development, civil society, and the impact of capitalism in the Arab world.