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Roger Garaudy

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Roger Garaudy or Ragaa (born July 17, 1913, in Marseille) is a French Muslim (convert) thinker from a strong communist background.

During World War II, Garaudy was imprisoned in Algeria, as a prisoner of war of Vichy France; he was a member of the French Communist Party who tried to reconcile Marxism with Roman Catholicism in the 1970s, and then abandoned both doctrines in favour of Sunni Islam when he became Muslim in 1982, taking his new name. He currently lives in Spain.

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
  • The Founding Myths of Modern Israel
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