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Mounir Shafiq (منير شفيق) is a Palestinian politician, intellectual and former militant leader. Served as general director of PLO planning center.

Shafiq began as an official in fatah movement. He gradually became a high ranking member and was affiliated with the Maoist faction in the movement. By 1973 he helped form the Fatah Student Brigade in Lebanon with the cooperation of OACL affiliated cells. Later in his life, he converted to Islam And changed his ideology under the influence of the Islamic Revolution In Iran and formed the Fighting Islamic Tendency, an early incarnation of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Biography
Mounir Shafiq was born in 1936 in jerusalem to Palestinian Christian parents. After 1948, living under Jordanian rule, he joined the Communist Party of Jordan, and got jailed for his political activity. In prison he became the ideologist of the party. By his release from jail in 1968, he joined DFLP, and then fatah movement.

He had majored in philosophy, political science and psychology, and had served as the head of the Lebanese branch of the General Union of Palestinian Writers.

In Lebanon
After Black September most of PLO fighters and officials were evacuated from jordan to Lebanon. In Lebanon Shafiq held an official PLO position.

By 1973, during the PLO rearmament in South lebanon, Shafiq has played a center role in founding the Fatah student brigade, Which was affiliated with the OACL and Hardline elements in fatah, particularly with the Maoist faction. The Maoist faction in fatah, represented by Shafiq, was promoting people's war, self criticism, mobilization of the masses, uncompromising stance against Israel and strengthening of the alliance between fatah and Maoist china.

In its peak, the student brigade had consisted of about few thousands of armed militants. The brigaders believed in fighting directly with the Israeli military and focused on clashes by the southern border rather than participating in the internal Lebanese conflict. In his writing, Shafiq praised the character of the fidai'i (in arabic: guerrilla, or militant); its ideological adherence and self-sacrifice. An anti-humanist, neo-narodnik model of militancy.

During the 80's
In the wake of the Islamic revolution of Iran, as well as the rapid change in Chinese foreign policy, and the growing moderate tendency of secular parts in fatah, Shafiq, along with other members in the movement, began deviating into Islamic and Jihadist stances. A colleague of Shafiq, the French intellectual Roger Garaudy, as well took part in influencing Shafiq to convert to Islam.

By the 80s, as the PLO was exiled in Tunis, Shafiq served as the general director of the PLO Planning Center. In office, he was promoting connections with Islamic organizations and figures. As a result, Ben-Ali's regime has requested that he'd leave Tunisia. He has lived in Lebanon, Amman and Sudan.

By that time, he was involved with revolutionary Islamic circles and was a close observer of the Islamic Jihad Brigades, and its guiding spirit. He formed the political wing of the Islamic Jihad, the Fighting Islamic Tendency, what was an early incarnation of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement. In his later life, he has been writing texts about revolutionary Islam, Islamic thought, popular guerrilla warfare and Arab unity.