Ahmad Abd al-Ghafur Attar

Ahmad Abd al-Ghafur Attar was a Saudi Arabian writer, journalist and poet, best known for his works about 20th-century Islamic challenges. Born in Mecca, capital city of Hejazi Hashemite Kingdom. He received a basic education and graduated from the Saudi Scientific Institute in 1937, took a scholarship for higher studies in Cairo University, then returned to his country and worked in some government offices before devoting himself to literature and research. Attar wrote many works about Arabic linguistic and Islamic studies, and gained fame as a Muslim apologist, anti-communist and anti-Zionist, he who believed in flexibility of Islamic jurisprudence for the modern era. Praised by Abbas Mahmoud al-Aqqad, he was also noted for his defense of Modern Standard Arabic against colloquial or spoken Arabic. In the 1960s, he established the famous Okaz newspaper and then the Kalimat al-Haqq magazine, which lasted only about eight months. He died at the age of 74 in Jeddah.