The Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights activist Tawakkol Karman has offered condolences over the death of the thinker, Dr. Muhammad Shahrour, who died yesterday Saturday in the UAE capital Abu Dhabi, at the age of 81.

In a statement on her official Facebook page, Tawakkol Karman wrote: “May God have mercy on Dr. Muhammad Shahrour who was an enlightened, unique and courageous reformer.

With the death of Shahrour, the Muslim nation has lost one of its most prominent thinkers, said Karman. 

He was an Emeritus Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Damascus who wrote extensively about Islam

Shahrour decided to write his first book, which took him more than twenty years to complete, after the Arab defeat in the 1967 Six Day War that was a collective shock for the Arab world. 

This led Shahrour to search for a way out of the region's crisis, which he interpreted above all as a moral and intellectual crisis.

He often argued that a literal translation and following of religious texts published hundreds of years ago could not be entirely compatible with modern day life and was not what God intended.