Jump to content

Roger Garaudy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Esperant (talk | contribs) at 08:42, 25 June 2005. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Roger Garaudy (born July 17, 1913, in Marseille) is a French author and philosopher. During World War Two, Garaudy was imprisoned as a prisoner of war in Algeria. Garaudy was a communist who tried to reconcile Marxism with Catholicism in the 1970s and then abandoned both doctrines in favour of Sunni Islam in 1982, taking the name Ragaa.


Revisionism

In 1998, a French court found him guilty of Holocaust denial and racial defamation, fining him FF 120,000 ($40,000) for his 1995 book, "The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics". Endorsing the views of French revisionist "historian" Robert Faurisson, the book declared that during the Holocaust, Jews were not killed in gas chambers.[1] The book was quickly translated into Arabic and Persian and a Sudanese lawyer, Faruk M. Abu Eissa, assembled a five-man legal team to support Garaudy at his trial in Paris. The Iranian government paid some of Garaudy's fine.

Garaudy is also known to be a friend of Abbé Pierre. The year of Garaudy's conviction, Abbé Pierre endorsed "the Founding Myths..." and also compared the Holocaust to the supposed "atrocities" of the ancient Israelites.

Works

Garaudy has written over 20 books, including:

  • Do we need God? (Avons-nous besoin de Dieu?)
  • God is dead (Dieu est mort)
  • The grandeur and decadences of Islam
  • Islam and integrism
  • Call to the living
  • Who do you say that I am?
  • Towards a war of religion
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Roger_Garaudy&oldid=16177511"