Roger Garaudy

Roger Garaudy (; 17 July 1913 – 13 June 2012) was a French philosopher, French resistance fighter and a communist author. He converted to Islam in 1982.

Early life and education Roger Garaudy was born in Marseille to working class Catholic parents. At the age of 14, Garaudy converted to Protestantism.

Political career Garaudy joined the French Communist Party in 1933. By mid 1940s, Garaudy was considered a leading polemicist within the party. He rose through the ranks and in 1945 he became a member of the party's leadership He was befriended by one of France's most prominent clerics of the time, the Abbé Pierre, who in later years supported Garaudy, even regarding the latter's most controversial views.

Garaudy was expelled from the Communist Party in 1970, because he had criticized the party's position on the student movement and the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. He had, however, accepted the invasion of Hungary in 1956. In May 1954, Garaudy defended another doctoral thesis, The Problem of Freedom and Necessity in the Light of Marxism, at the Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences.

Garaudy lectured in the faculty of arts department of the University of Clermont-Ferrand from 1962 to 1965. Due to controversies between Garaudy and Michel Foucault, Garaudy left. He later taught in Poitiers from 1969 to 1972. The goal of socialism in his view was not simply economic or providing social justice, but also giving each individual their personal chances for creativity.

Holocaust denial Conviction of violating Gayssot Act

In 1996, Garaudy published, with his editor Pierre Guillaume, the work Les Mythes fondateurs de la politique israelienne (literally, The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics), later translated into English as The Founding Myths of Modern Israel. In the book he wrote of "the myth of the six million" Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Because of this breach of French law concerning Holocaust denial, the courts banned any further publication and on 27 February 1998 fined Garaudy 120,000 French francs.

His appeal was rejected as inadmissible. The ECHR ruled that Garaudy had denied historical facts in his book which is not a research work. It also argued that the interference pursued two of the legitimate aims included in Gayssot Act articles and is not a violation of Garaudy's right for free speech. The ECHR did not use this rationale in Perinçek v. Switzerland.

Iranian support In Iran, 160 members of the parliament and 600 journalists signed a petition in Garaudy's support. On 20 April 1998, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei met Garaudy. Khamenei was critical of the West which, he said, condemned "the racist behavior of the Nazis" while accepting the Zionists’ "Nazi-like behavior." Iranian president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, insisted in a sermon delivered on Iranian radio that Hitler "only killed 20,000 Jews and not six million" and that "Garaudy's crime derives from the doubt he cast on Zionist propaganda." Iranian President, Mohammad Khatami, described Garaudy in 1998 as "a thinker" and "a believer" who was brought to trial merely for publishing research which was "displeasing to the West."

Death and legacy Roger Garaudy died in Chennevières-sur-Marne, Val-de-Marne, on Wednesday 13 June 2012, aged 98.

According to Azzam Tamimi, Tunisian thinker Rached Ghannouchi was inspired by Garaudy in the early 1980s, after he read a translation of his book on women. He subsequently authored a treatise on women rights and on the status of women in the Islamic movement, partly influenced by Garaudy's work.

Awards and honours Croix de Guerre Prix Kadhafi des droits de l'homme (2002)