MAXIME RODINSON writes in the tradition of the “scholar-activist” and the essays in this collection, despite all being written after his expulsion from the French Communist Party, are unashamedly partisan in openly aiming to provide strategic analysis and guidance to communists and anti-imperialists in the Arab world.

The commitment to this cause clearly underlies both his choice of topic and his approach throughout — refreshing in an age where a professed, if insincere, commitment to “neutrality” is sadly dominant.

Along with theoretical treatises on Islam and its relationship with other ideologies, particularly socialism, the book provides a detailed analysis of the recent political history of the Arab world.

The theoretical aspect is particularly pertinent today. With the original states of the “Arab revolution” of the 1950s and ’60s — Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Libya — being torn apart by movements committed to a particular brand of (Wahhabi) Islam, there is much of relevance in Rodinson‘s analysis of both the elements of compatibility and the potential for conflict between Islam and the modern revolutionary ideologies such as socialism and nationalism.

Indeed sometimes it is the very compatibility itself which leads to the conflict.

Of Islam’s respect for the poor, which it shares with socialism, Rodinson writes: “The slaves of antiquity, the proletarians of the capitalist world, were sufficiently excluded from the Establishment and its values to give a joyful welcome to anything which might threaten the oppressive status quo; they recognized themselves in Eunius, Spartacus, Jesus, Marx, Bakunin or Lenin.

“But traditional Muslim society has a place for the pauper, it recognises his worth in God’s eyes and his rights to a holy charity, it welcomes him into its fraternities and its corporations and turns him into a guide and a saint.

“It sanctifies, sacralises his grime and misery. At first sight, the pauper sees the innovator as somebody who wants to push him off his mystic throne. And what is he offered in return? Nothing.”

In terms of today’s Arab nationalist states, which did after all make significant strides in the provision of education, welfare, and overall living standards, “nothing” might be a bit of stretch.

But when these things were threatened by neoliberalism in recent decades, the mistrust — which never really went away — burst onto the scene once again.

Some of the issues addressed, however, are pertinent precisely because they reflect changed realities. Rodinson notes that at the time he was writing at the height of the cold war, there was a seeming obsession in mainstream academia and commentary in demonstrating the incompatibility of Islam and communism, as Western rulers sought to convince Muslims that it would be against their religion to adopt a communist path.

In contrast, “liberalism,” as the West’s favoured ideology, was presented as fundamentally compatible with Islam.

It is astounding to be reading this at a time when the same ruling class — needing to demonise a particular alternative value system in order to justify repression and home and murder abroad — now offer precisely the opposite interpretation, that Islam is a grave threat to Western democracy.

Based on a formidable knowledge of both Arab politics and religious history, this is an important book by an outstanding scholar.

Review by Dan Glazebrook