Maxime Rodinson

Maxime Rodinson (26 January 1915 – 23 May 2004) was a French Marxist historian, sociologist and orientalist. He was the son of a Russian-Polish clothing trader and his wife, who both were murdered in Auschwitz concentration camp. After studying oriental languages, he became a professor of Ethiopian (Ge'ez) at the École pratique des hautes études. 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 was expelled in 1958 after criticizing it. 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.