A Marxist historian and sociologist, he specialized in Oriental studies and became a professor of Ethiopian languages. His scholarly output explored a rich tapestry of subjects, including religious and political movements. Rodinson was known for his involvement in left-wing politics and later emerged as a notable critic of Israeli policies. He is credited by some with coining the term "Islamic fascism" to describe revolutionary phenomena.
Presents a rebuttal of the cultural reductionism of Max Weber and others who have tried to explain the politics and society of the Middle East by reference to some unchanging entity called 'Islam,' typically characterised as instinctively hostile to capitalism. This work looks at the facts, analysing economic texts with his customary common sense.
A classic secular history of the prophet Muhammad that vividly recreates the fascinating time in which Islam was born. Maxime Rodinson, both a maverick Marxist and a distinguished professor at the Sorbonne, first published his biography of Muhammad in 1960. The book, a classic in its field, has been widely read ever since. Rodinson, though deeply versed in scholarly studies of the Prophet, does not seek to add to it here but to introduce Muhammad, first of all, as “a man of flesh and blood” who led a life of extraordinary drama and shaped history as few others have. Equally, he seeks to lay out an understanding of Muhammad’s legacy and Islam as what he called an ideological movement, similar to the universalist religions of Christianity and Buddhism as well as the secular movement of Marxism, but possessing a singular commitment to “the deeply ingrained idea that Islam offers not only a path to salvation but (for many, above all) the ideal of a just society to be realized on earth.” Rodinson’s book begins by introducing the specific land and the larger world into which Muhammad was born and the development of his prophetic calling. It then follows the steps of his career and the way his leadership gave birth to a religion and a state. A final chapter considers the world as Islam has transformed it.
In his trademark polemical style, Maxime Rodinson examines the complexities of political Islam and Marxist ideology and their implications for Arab nationalism.