Abdel Wahab Mohamed El-Messiri (October 8, 1938 – July 3, 2008) was an Egyptian Muslim thinker and sociologist. He authored the Encyclopedia of Jews, Judaism, and Zionism, one of the largest Arabic encyclopedic works of the twentieth century. Some believe that through this work, he provided a new, encyclopedic, objective, and scientific perspective on the Jewish phenomenon in particular, and the Western experience of modernity in general, utilizing the concepts of explanatory models he developed during his academic career. Others, however, believe that his encyclopedia was biased towards Jews and overly sympathetic to their stances towards non-Jews; some even described it as a defense of the Jews.