Samir Mustafa

Abu Abd al-Rahman Samir ibn Mustafa al-Suyuti (born about 1976) is an Egyptian preacher and sermon-giver from the city of Helwan, south of Cairo. He became known for his pulpit at the al-Haqq Mosque in Helwan and for his lesson series on creed, devotion and biography, and his voice has kept spreading among young people through his official YouTube channel despite his detention since 2017. ^{1 2}

Samir Mustafa was born in Egypt in about 1976 and grew up and lived in Helwan, his family's origin being Asyut in Upper Egypt. He was not the son of a preaching family but formed himself by seeking out teachers: he read the two Sahih collections and hadith terminology under Hasan Abu al-Ashbal al-Zuhayri, read part of Sahih al-Bukhari under Abu Ishaq al-Heweny, took jurisprudence and its principles from Muhammad Abd al-Maqsud al-Afifi, and regarded Ata ibn Abd al-Latif as his greatest teacher, writing a separate biography of him; he also kept the company of Mohamed Hussein Yaqoub for ten years. His reading was dominated by the books of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim, especially on conduct and the works of the heart. ¹

His best-known teaching seat was the al-Haqq Mosque in Helwan, from which came chaptered series on creed, devotion and biography; he also taught at the Bilal Mosque and elsewhere and gave hundreds of sermons in the mosques of Cairo, Giza and Egypt's governorates. The Islamweb archive holds about three hundred audio items of his, among them the Prophet ﷺ's biography, gratitude, an explanation of Sahih Muslim from the Book of Repentance, and the doctrine of divine decree, together with an encyclopedia of more than eighty Friday sermons. His two written works are a biography of his teacher Ata ibn Abd al-Latif and Anin al-Masajid min 'Abath al-Sajid ("The Mosques' Groaning at the Worshipper's Frivolity"). ¹

On 6 June 2017 Samir Mustafa went to Cairo airport intending to perform Umrah, was stopped at the departure gate and arrested, and his family had no news of him for two months. According to his documented biography in the Alsiyars encyclopedia of contemporary figures, he was acquitted of the first charges and then re-arrested in further cases on the same charges, finally standing in the case known in the media as the "Jabhat al-Nusra cell" case with 312 defendants; his trial sessions began in July 2025 and have been adjourned repeatedly into October 2026 without a verdict, by which time he had spent nine years in detention. His official channel has kept publishing his lessons and clips while he is detained, so that his voice has spread further among a generation that never attended his gatherings. ^{1 2}