Maxime Rodinson (FRA)

Maxime Rodinson (French: [ʁɔdɛ̃sɔ̃]; 26 January 1915, Paris – 23 May 2004, Marseilles) was a French Marxist historian, sociologist and orientalist. He was the son of a Russian-Polish clothing trader and his wife who both died in the Auschwitz concentration camp. After studying oriental languages, he became a professor of Ethiopian (Ge'ez) at EPHE (École Pratique des Hautes Études, France). He was the author of a body of work, including the book Muhammad, a biography of the prophet of Islam.

Rodinson joined the French Communist Party in 1937 for "moral reasons", but later turned away after the party's Stalinist drift. He was expelled from the party in 1958. He became well known in France when he expressed sharp criticism of Israel, particularly opposing the settlement policies of the Jewish state. Some credit him with coining the term "Islamic fascism" (le fascisme islamique) in 1979, which he used to describe the Iranian revolution.

Works: 

The Arabs (1981) ISBN 0-226-72356-9 — original French publication: 1979
Marxism and the Muslim world (1982) ISBN 0-85345-586-4, original French publication: 1972
Israel and the Arabs (1982) ISBN 0-14-022445-9
Marxist-Leninist Scientific Atheism and the Study of Religion and Atheism in the USSR (Religion and Reason) by James Thrower with introduction by Maxime Rodinson (1983) ISBN 90-279-3060-0
Cult, Ghetto, and State: The Persistence of the Jewish Question (1984) ISBN 0-685-08870-7
Israel: A Colonial-Settler State? (1988) ISBN 0-913460-22-2
Europe and the Mystique of Islam (2002) ISBN 1-85043-106-X, translation of 'La Fascination de l’Islam,' 1980
Muhammad (2002) ISBN 1-56584-752-0, original French publication: 1960
Islam and Capitalism (1973) ISBN 0-292-73816-1, original French publication of 'Islam et le capitalisme' in 1966.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxime_Rodinson