Salama Moussa (or Musa; 1887 – 4 August 1958) ( , ) was an Egyptian journalist, writer and political theorist. Salama Moussa was an avowed secularist, he introduced the writings of Darwin, Nietzsche, and Freud to Egyptian readers. Salama Moussa campaigned against traditional religions and urged the Egyptian society to embrace European thought, he espoused the theory of evolution by natural selection. He was an Egyptian nationalist. He was an advocate of liberalism and a supporter of the Egyptian liberal movement. Salama Moussa is from Taha Hussein's generation; Naguib Mahfouz called Salama Moussa his "spiritual father", whereas Salama Moussa acknowledged his own intellectual debt to Ahmed Lutfi el-Sayed. Salama Moussa joined al-Wafd party after Saad Zaghloul became the leader, he believed it to be essentially a call to independence. He looked for political and economic independence of Egypt from the British occupation. He popularised the idea of socialism in Egypt and advocated egalitarian socialism. He was jailed in 1946 for criticizing the monarchy. Salama Moussa emphasized the unity of the Egyptians, he praised Ahmed Lutfi el-Sayed for "paving the way for the revolution of 1919 by uniting the Egyptian nation on a national stance". Early life Salama Moussa was born in 1887 into a Coptic family in a village called Kafr al-Afi near Zagazig, Egypt. His family is originally from a small village called el-Baiadeye, in Asyut, Upper Egypt. His father died when Salama Moussa was still a young child, leaving the family an inheritance that allowed them to live comfortably. Salama Moussa attended a Muslim kuttab, a Coptic school, and a government school, then in 1903 he moved to Cairo to receive a secondary education. The Khedivial secondary school where Moussa attended, from 1903 to 1907, was run like a military camp with harsh punishment for misbehavior dished out by the British instructors. In Cairo during the early 20th century there was a rising anti-British sentiment rooted in the nationalist movement, and Qasim Amin's movement for the liberation of women was creating a stir. While in Cairo, Moussa was exposed to writers such as Farah Antun, Jurji Zaydan, and Ahmad Lutfi Al-Sayyid that discussed modern and at the time radical ideas such as Social Darwinism, women's rights, and nationalism. Growing up in a religious minority in Muslim dominated Egypt he was attracted to these ideas. After secondary school Moussa was interested in studying European literature and science, he was