28 Facts About Louis Massignon

Louis Massignon was a French Catholic scholar of Islam and a pioneer of Catholic-Muslim mutual understanding.

Louis Massignon was an influential figure in the twentieth century with regard to the Catholic church's relationship with Islam.

Louis Massignon focused increasingly on the work of Mahatma Gandhi, whom he considered a saint.

Louis Massignon played a role in Islam being accepted as an Abrahamic Faith among Catholics.

Louis Massignon's father, Fernand Massignon, a painter and a sculptor under the pseudonym Pierre Roche, was an intimate friend of novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans.

Louis Massignon's daughter was the linguist and ethnographer, Genevieve Massignon.

Louis Massignon started his studies at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand in Paris where he befriended his classmate Henri Maspero, later a renowned sinologist.

Louis Massignon himself interpreted the state of delirium as a "reaction of [his] brain to the forced conversion of [his] soul".

Louis Massignon recovered rapidly from his illness, had a second spiritual experience and travelled to Beirut accompanied by an Iraqi Carmelite priest, Pere Anastase-Marie de Saint Elie.

Louis Massignon strongly felt that he was assisted in his encounter with God and in his conversion by the intercession of living and deceased friends, among them Joris-Karl Huysmans and Charles de Foucauld, who had experienced God in a Muslim context.

However, Louis Massignon did not follow Foucauld's invitation to join him in his life as a hermit among the Tuareg in Tamanrasset.

On June 15,1919, Louis Massignon was provisionally appointed to the Chair of Muslim Sociology and Sociography at the College de France in Paris, as a successor to its creator, Alfred le Chatelier.

Louis Massignon was finally given the chair in January 1926, when Le Chatelier retired.

Louis Massignon conducted research on various subjects related to Islam, such as the lives of al-Hallaj, Muhammad's companion Salman Pak and the significance of Abraham for the three Abrahamic religions.

Louis Massignon was ordained by Bishop Kamel Medawar on January 28,1950, with the permission of Patriarch Maximos IV, despite some opposition from the Holy See, which finally accepted his priestly ordination.

Louis Massignon committed himself to the following :.

Shariati had immense respect for Louis Massignon and adored him as a teacher and a master in his book Kavir.

Louis Massignon died on October 30,1962, and was buried on November 6 in Pordic, Brittany.

Louis Massignon saw his becoming a priest later in life as a way of offering up his life for others.

In Louis Massignon's view, Islam is a religion based on Muhammad's genuine inspiration, which made him see the oneness of God.

Louis Massignon thus sees the revelation in Islam as a "mysterious answer of grace to Abraham's prayer for Ismael and the Arab race".

Louis Massignon believes revelation to occur in three stages, the first being that of the patriarchs, to whom natural religion was revealed, second the revelation of the Law to Moses and third, Christ and his revelation of Divine Love.

Louis Massignon thus wants to integrate them into salvation given by Christ without them having to become Christians themselves; an external conversion does not seem necessary to him, he rather envisages an "internal conversion" of Muslims within Islam.

Louis Massignon sees some potential for further development of revelation within Islam: Islam saw it as its original mission, according to Massignon, to spread the message of the oneness of God even by means of violence so as to force all idol-worshippers to acknowledge it.

Louis Massignon believes that the self-offering of Muslim saints in substitution for their brothers can make Islam go ahead on the way of revelation.

Louis Massignon even showed great admiration for some of Islam's saints, especially for al-Hallaj.

Louis Massignon was sometimes criticized by Muslims for giving too much importance to Muslim figures that are considered somewhat marginal by Islamic mainstream, such as al-Hallaj and for paying too much attention to Sufism, and too little to Islamic legalism.

Edward Said, a non-Muslim Arab-American scholar, wrote Louis Massignon used Hallaj "to embody, to incarnate, values essentially outlawed by the mainstream doctrinal system of Islam, a system that Louis Massignon himself described mainly in order to circumvent it with al-Hallaj".