He was a famous contemporary French Orientalist, born in a simple family to a Russian father and a Polish mother and remained an errant boy for some time. At seventeen years of age, he was able to join the Institute of Oriental Languages and earn a Bachelor Degree. In 1937, he married, entered the National Center for Scientific Research and joined the Communist Party.

He was appointed a professor and then the headmaster of the Post-Graduate School of Paris. He is the author of many studies about the origins of Islam, Islamic sociology, the Messenger of Islam, the comparison between Islam and Capitalism, Islam and Communism, the effects of Arabic on some European languages and the Islamic effect on the Italian poet, Dante (1265-1321). His books include: Muhammad (1961); Islam and Capitalism (1966); Marxism and the Muslim World (1972); The Arabs (1979); The Mystique of Islam (1980); Cult, Ghetto and State: The Persistence of the Jewish Question (1984); Islam: policy and faith (1993); and Between Islam and the West: dialogues with Jirar Khouri (1998).

Rodinson, as says Jirar who knew him for thirty years, was very accurate in scrutiny and investigation and encyclopedic in knowledge. In 1977, they both began to conduct many dialogues published under the title Between Islam and the West. His works, according to Khouri, are widely accepted by scientific environs as well as the public. The main work of Rodinson is Muhammad, which is a Marxist documentary reading in the life of the Prophet Muhammad [peace be upon him]. He contributed in modifying the ethnic reading of Islam which would entertain modernism. It is indeed a great contribution opposite to those of today whose main characteristic is ignorance of Islam.

In 1968, Rodinson, who did his best for the approximation between both banks of the Mediterranean through diversity and dialogue of cultures, took the attitude of an advocate for the Palestinian Cause and created the Groupe de Recherches et d'Actions pour la Palestine with his colleague Jacques Berque. This exposed him, as an anti-Zionist Jew, to all kinds of censures and threats. But he never gave up his attitude.

Chivalry of Saladin

“The arch-foe, Saladin aroused widespread admiration among the people of the West. He had waged war humanely and chivalrously, albeit with scant reciprocation by the Crusaders, notably by (Richard I) Cœur de Lion.”[1]

Willing to accept

“In Italy, whole regions made it known to their oppressive governments that they would heartily welcome an eventual Turkish invasion, as some Balkan Christians had done.”[2]

The refuge is Islam

“The next generation was to move on from objectivity to admiration. The Ottoman Empire's toleration of all sorts of religious minorities was given as an example to Christians by Bayle and many others. This was the time when, following the example set by the Spanish Jews two centuries earlier, the Calvinists of Hungary and Transylvania, the Protestants of Silesia and the Cossack Old Believers of Russia sought refuge in Turkey or looked to the Porte in their flight from Catholic or Orthodox persecution.”[3]

References:

[1] Maxime Rodinson, the Western Image and Western Studies of Islam, Legacy of Islam, supervised by Schact and Cliford Bozworth, 22.

[2] Ibid. 31.

[3] Ibid. 38.

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