Islam and Capitalism is a learned, engaging rebuttal of the cultural reductionism of Max Weber and others who have tried to explain the politics and society of the Middle East by reference to some unchanging entity called “Islam,” typically characterized as instinctively hostile to capitalism. Maxime Rodinson looks at the facts, analyzing economic texts with his customary common sense, to show that Muslims never had any problem making money.

Maxime Rodinson was a French Marxist historian, sociologist, and a professor at the renowned École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris.