Maxime Rodinson: Difference between revisions

Rodinson joined the [[French Communist Party]] in 1937 for "moral reasons"{{fact|date=April 2024}} but was expelled in 1958 after criticizing it. He became well known in France when he expressed sharp [[criticism of Israel]], particularly opposing the [[Israeli settlement|settlement policies]] of the Jewish state. Some credit him with coining the term "''[[Islamofascism|Islamic fascism]]"'' (''le fascisme islamique'') in 1979, which he used to describe the [[Iranian revolutionRevolution]].

The parents of Maxime Rodinson were Russian-[[Polish JewishJew]]ish immigrants who were members of the [[French Communist Party|Communist Party]].<ref>[http://lhomme.revues.org/index1546.html L'homme. Jean-Pierre Digard: Maxime Rodinson (1915-2004)] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110727213653/http://lhomme.revues.org/index1546.html |date=2011-07-27 }}</ref><ref>[http://www.republique-des-lettres.fr/10484-maxime-rodinson.php La République des Lettres. Noël Blandin. Biographie : Qui est Maxime Rodinson?]</ref> They arrived in [[France]] at the end of the 19th century as [[refugee]]s from [[pogroms]] in the [[Russian Empire]]. His father was a clothing trader who set up a business making waterproof clothing in the [[Yiddish]]-speaking part of [[Paris]], called the [[:fr:Pletzl|Pletzl]], in the district of the [[Le Marais|Marais]]. They became port-of-call for other Russian exiles, most of them revolutionaries hostile to the [[Tsarist regime]]. His father tried to unionizeunionise and organize educational and other services for his [[working-class]] [[immigrant]] group. In 1892, he helped to establish a community library, containing hundreds of works in [[Yiddish language|Yiddish]], [[Russian language|Russian]], and [[French language|French]].

In 1920, the Rodinsons joined the [[French Communist Party|Communist Party]] and as soon as France recognized the [[Russian SFSR]], in 1924, they applied for [[Soviet]] citizenship. Rodinson grew up in a fervently [[Communist]], non-religious and [[anti-Zionist]] family.<ref name ="Johnson"/>

Rodinson was born in Paris on 26 January 1915. Neither he nor his sister learned [[Yiddish language|Yiddish]]. The family was poor, so Rodinson became an errand boy at the age of 13 after obtaining a primary school certificate. But his learning thrived through borrowed books and obliging teachers who didn't demand payment,<ref name ="Johnson">{{cite news |first=Douglas |last=Johnson |url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/jun/03/guardianobituaries.france |title=Maxime Rodinson, Marxist historian of Islam |work=[[The Guardian]] |date=3 June 2004 }}</ref> and Rodinson began to study [[oriental languages]], at first on Saturday afternoons and in the evenings.

In 1932, thanks to a rule allowing persons without academic qualifications to take the competitive entrance examination, Rodinson gained entry to the Ecole des Langues Orientales and prepared for a career as a diplomat-interpreter. He studied [[Arabic]] but later, preparing a thesis in [[comparative Semitics]], he also learned [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]], which surprised his family. In 1937, he entered the National Council of Research, became a full-time student of [[Islam]], and joined the [[French Communist Party|Communist Party]].<ref name="Johnson" />

===Syria and Lebanon (1940-471940–1947)===

In 1940, after the beginning of the [[Second World War]], Rodinson was appointed to the French Institute in [[Damascus]]. His subsequent stay in Lebanon and Syria allowed him to escape the [[persecution of Jews]] in [[Vichy France|occupied France]] and extend his knowledge of [[Islam]]. His parents perishedwere murdered in [[Auschwitz]] in 1943. Rodinson spent most of the next seven years in Lebanon, 6six as a civil servant in [[Beirut]] and six months teaching in [[Sidon]] at the Maqasid{{dubious|Means what? As in WP article on maqasid? So an Islamic school?!!|date=March 2016}} high school.<ref name = "Young">{{cite web |first=Michael |last=Young, [|url=http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Opinion/Commentary/2004/May-27/95172-some-thoughts-on-the-death-of-anti-marxist-maxime-rodinson.ashx '|title=Some thoughts on the death of 'anti-Marxist' Maxime Rodinson,'] |work=[[The Daily Star (Lebanon)|The Daily Star]] |date=27 May 2004. }}</ref>

In 1948, Rodinson became a librarian at the [[Bibliothèque Nationale]] in Paris, where he was put in charge withof the Muslim section. In 1955, he was appointed director of studies at the [[École Pratiquepratique des Hauteshautes Etudesétudes]], becoming a professor of [[Ge'ez language|classical Ethiopian]] four years later. Rodinson left the [[French Communist Party|Communist Party]] in 1958, following [[Nikita Khrushchev]]'s [[20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|revelations of Stalin's crimes]]<ref name="Young" /> amid accusations of using the association to further his career, but nonetheless remained a [[Marxist]]. According to Rodinson himself, the decision was based on his [[agnosticism]], and he explained that being a party member was like following a religion and he wanted to renounce "the narrow subordination of efforts at lucidity to the exigencies of mobilization, even for just causes."

He became well known when he published "''[[Muhammad (book)|Muhammad]]"'' in 1961, a biography of the Prophetprophet's life written from a sociological point of view, a book which is still banned in parts of the Arab world. Five years later, he published "''Islam and Capitalism"'', a study of the economic decline of Muslim societies. He participated with other colleagues committed to the left ([[Elena Cassin]], [[Maurice Godelier]], [[André-Georges Haudricourt]], Charles Malamoud, [[Jean-Paul Brisson]], [[Jean Yoyotte]], Jean Bottero) in a [[Marxism|Marxist]] think tank organised by [[Jean-Pierre Vernant]]. This group took on an institutional form with the creation, in 1964, of the ''Centre des recherches comparées sur les sociétés anciennes'', which later became the ''Centre [[Louis Gernet]]'', focusing more on the study of [[ancient Greece]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Vernant Jean-Pierre |url=https://www.ex-pcf.com/index.php/liste-alpha/215-vernant-jean-pierre |access-date=2022-01-25 |website=www.ex-pcf.com}}</ref> He was awarded the 1995 Prize by the Rationalist Organisation.{{dubious|What's that?|date=March 2016}}

===Support for Palestinian [[self-determination]]===

Rodinson took a public stance in favorfavour of Palestinian self-determination during the [[Six-Day War]]. A few months before publishing his famous article, Rodinson took part in a meeting organisedorganized in the "[[Maison de la Mutualité|Mutualité]]" in Paris for the [[Palestinian people|Palestinian]] struggle. Published in June 1967 under the title "Israel, fait colonial" (Israel, a colonial fact) in [[Jean-Paul Sartre]]'s journal, ''[[Les Temps Modernes]]'', Rodinson's article made him known as an advocate of the Palestinian cause. He created the Groupe de Recherches et d'Actions pour la Palestine with his colleague [[Jacques Berque]].

At that time, he observed that the Palestinian struggle was a cause embraced mainly by the [[anti-semiticantisemitic]] right and [[Maoist]] fringe of the left. He called on the Palestinians to take their case to [[Liberalism in Europe|liberal Europeans]], warning them of the danger of a religious nature of the conflict which would tarnish the reputation of a just cause:

in the ardorardour of the [[ideological]] struggle against [[Zionism]], those Arabs most influenced by a Muslim religious orientation would seize upon the old religious and popular prejudices[[prejudice]]s against the Jews in general

His anti-Zionism was based on two main reproaches : pretending to impose on all people of Judaic descent all over the world an identity and a [[nationalist]] ideology, and judaizing territories at the cost of expulsion and domination of the Palestinians. Hence, in his book ''Israël and the Arabs'' in 1968, he considered the Palestinians as the single national fact in the [[Palestinian territories]]:

Elsewhere, he emphasized that "{{blockquote|my uncompromising condemnation of the errors and crimes committed under the aegis of the Zionist movement, in contradistinction to the apologies for these things by my opponents, has given me the right to criticize more or less analogous ideas and practices among the Arabs, who understandably are not interested in obviously biased discourses. For my part, I have been able to try to explain to Arab audiences, to Arab public opinion, that the behaviour of the Zionists, although surely meriting criticism, does belong to the gamut of human conduct. I have said and reiterated, for example before three commissions convoked by the Egyptian Popular Assembly in late 1969, that &nbsp;... I deplored the historical error of the creation of the state of Israel on Arab land, but that a new nationality or ethnic group with a culture of its own now exists there, and not a religious community that could as well adopt the Arabic language and Arab culture, nor a heterogeneous collection of gangs of occupiers who could be sent back where they came from with the greatest of ease."<ref>Maxime Rodinson, Cult, Ghetto, and State: The Persistence of the Jewish Question. London: Saqi Books, 1983, pp. 14-15.</ref>}}

That is the reason why he disagreed with the [[Palestinian Liberation OrganisationOrganization]] ([[PLO]]), warning them against the illusion based on the Algerian [[National Liberation Front (Algeria)|FLN]] guerilla warfare which had driven out French "colons". At the same time, he urged the Israelis to stop pretending to be part of Europe and accept being a part of the [[Middle East]], then, Israelis have to learn to live with their neighborsneighbours, by reckoning the injustices made against the Palestinians and adopting a language of conciliation and compromise.

Rodinson's work combined [[Sociologysociology|sociological]] and [[Marxism|Marxist]] theories, which, he said, helped him to understand "that the world of Islam was subject to the same laws and tendencies as the rest of the human race." Hence, his first book was a study of [[Muhammad]] ("''[[Muhammad" (book)|Muhammad]]'', 1960), setting the Prophet in his social context. This attempt was a rationalist study which tried to explain the economical and social origins of Islam. A later work was "''Islam and Capitalism"'' (1966), the title echoing to [[Max Weber]]'s famous thesis regarding the development of [[capitalism]] in Europe and the rise of [[Protestantism]]. Rodinson tried to rise above two prejudices: the first one widespread in Europe that [[Islam]] is a brake for the development of capitalism, and the second one, widespread among Muslims, that [[Islam]] was [[egalitarian]]. He emphasized social elements, seeing [[Islam]] as a neutral factor. Throughout all of his later works on [[Islam]], Rodinson stressed the relation between the doctrines[[doctrine]]s inspired by [[Muhammad]] and the economic and social structures of the Muslim world.

Rodinson also coined the term "''theologocentrism"'' for the tendency to explain all [[empirical]] phenomena in the Muslim world with reference to Islam, while ignoring the role of "historical and [[social conditioning]]" in explaining events.<ref name="RodinsonVeinus2002">{{cite book|author1= Maxime Rodinson |author2= Roger Veinus |title= Europe and the Mystique of Islam |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=Ejvdf8OIrsEC&pg=PA105 |date= 23 November 2002 |publisher= I.B.Tauris |isbn= 978-1-85043-106-0 |pages= 104–108}}</ref><ref name="Rahnema2011">{{cite book|author=Ali Rahnema |title= Superstition as Ideology in Iranian Politics: From Majlesi to Ahmadinejad |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=hzTzAuk1D-8C&pg=PA29 |date= 6 June 2011 |publisher= Cambridge University Press| isbn= 978-1-139-49562-2 |page= 29}}</ref><ref name="Jung2006">{{cite book|author= Dietrich Jung |title= Democratization and Development: New Political Strategies for the Middle East |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=wQXGAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA185 |date= 5 August 2006 |publisher= Palgrave Macmillan |isbn= 978-1-4039-8343-5 |page= 185}}</ref><ref name="Abukhalil2011">{{cite book|author= As'ad Abukhalil|author-link= As'ad Abukhalil|title= Bin Laden, Islam, & America's New War on Terrorism |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=eKn2rwNNWJoC&pg=PA19 |date= 4 January 2011 |publisher= Seven Stories Press |isbn= 978-1-60980-175-5 |page= 19}}</ref>

{{QuoteBlockquote|I have no wish to deceive anyone ... I do not believe that the Koran is the book of Allah. If I did, I should be a Muslim. But the Koran is there, and since I, like many other non-Muslims, have interested myself in the study of it, I am naturally bound to express my views. For several centuries the explanation produced by Christians and rationalists has been that Muhammad was guilty of falsification, by deliberately attributing to Allah his own thoughts and instructions. We have seen that this theory is not tenable. The most likely one, as I have explained at length, is that Muhammad did really experience [[sensory phenomena]] translated into words and phrases and that he interpreted them as messages from the [[God in Abrahamic religions|Supreme Being]]. He developed the habit of receiving these revelations[[revelation]]s in a particular way. His sincerity appears beyond a doubt, especially in [[Mecca]] when we see how Allah hustled, chastised and led him into steps that he was extremely unwilling to take.}}

* ''Europe and the Mystique of Islam'' (2002) {{ISBN|1-85043-106-X}}, translation of 'La Fascination de l’Islaml'Islam,' 1980

* [[Islamic scholars]]

{{Reflistreflist}}

[[Category:Academic staff of the University of Paris faculty]]

[[Category:Anti-ZionistJewish JewsFrench anti-Zionists]]

[[Category:JewishDeutscher anti-ZionismMemorial inPrize Europewinners]]