Shukri Mustafa

Shukri Mustafa (1942–1978, Arabic: شكري مصطفى‎‎, IPA: [ˈʃokɾi mosˈtˤɑfɑ]) was an Egyptian agricultural engineer who led the extremist Islamist group Jama'at al-Muslimin, popularly known as Takfir wal-Hijra. He began his path toward Islamist thought by joining the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1960s. After being arrested for activities related to the group he became interested in the works of Sayyid Qutb and other radical thinkers. After being released in 1971, he gathered followers and withdrew from contemporary society. He was executed on March 19, 1978 after allegedly kidnapping and killing of an Egyptian government minister and mainstream Muslim cleric, Muhammad al-Dhahabi. He was sentenced to death after a swiftly arranged military tribunal, alongside four other leaders.

Shukri was born on 1 June 1942 in Abu Khurus in Middle Egypt but moved with his mother at a young age to nearby Asyut. He attended an Islamic school and went on to study agriculture at Assiut University. It was here that he first came into contact with the Muslim Brotherhood, and he was arrested for distributing their pamphlets in 1965.

Shukri spent six years in prison, initially in Tura and then, from 1967, in Abu Za'bal. While imprisoned, he read the recently executed Qutb's declarations that Egypt was in jahiliyyah (a state of pre-Islamic ignorance). Shukri and some of his fellow prisoners built on these ideas; they believed that most Egyptians were no longer truly Muslims, but had become apostates by their failure to struggle against the state. Shukri's faction, known as Jama'at al-Muslimin (Society of Muslims), additionally believed that Qutb had also called for total separation from jahiliyyah society.

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