His father, Fernand Massignon (1855–1922), a painter and a sculptor under the pseudonym Pierre Roche, was an intimate friend of novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans.

[2] Whereas his father was a sceptic, his mother, Marie Hovyn Massignon, had a deep prayer life and was his earliest and foremost religious influence.

Louis Massignon started his studies at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris (1896) where he befriended his classmate Henri Maspero, later a renowned sinologist.

In 1902, he continued his studies, graduating licencié ès-lettres on an essay on Honoré d'Urfé and embarking on the first of his many Arab subjects: the corporations of Fez in the 15th century.

This situation of captivity, and the experience of Muslim spirituality, also brought about his conversion to Christianity: In mortal danger, which filled him with extreme, physical anguish, he first felt remorse for his past life, made an abortive and tentative suicide attempt, fell into a delirium and a state of great agitation (later diagnosed as either malaria, or a stroke caused by sun and fatigue), and finally experienced the presence of God as a "visitation of a Stranger", who overwhelmed him, leaving him passive and helpless, feeling judged for having judged others harshly, and almost making him lose his very sense of identity.

[7] He recovered rapidly from his illness, had a second spiritual experience and travelled to Beirut accompanied by an Iraqi Carmelite priest, Père Anastase-Marie de Saint Elie.

In the 1930s, Francis of Assisi played a great role in his life: In 1931, Massignon became a Franciscan tertiary and took the name of "Ibrahim" (due to the hospitality of Abraham to the angels).

[11] On February 9, 1934, he and Mary Kahil, a friend from his youth, prayed at the abandoned Franciscan church of Damietta, Egypt, where Francis of Assisi had met Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil in 1219.

He 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, however, finally accepted his priestly ordination.

After World War II, while still remaining active as a scholar, his focus of attention shifted to political action to help Muslims and Arab Christians.

In this he followed the model of Mahatma Gandhi, whose work he studied later in his life and considered a saint, and his principles of non-violent action (ahimsa and satyagraha).

He made it clear that he did not hope for success in all his areas of action, but that, first and foremost, he wanted to bear witness to Truth and Justice, just as Jesus Christ had done.

He committed himself to the following (in chronological order): Dialogue was very important for him; he also talked to the Iranian religious sociologist Ali Shariati who would later become extremely influential as a modernist Muslim thinker in Iran.

At the end of the conference king Mohammed V invited the participants to his palace and awarded Massignon the Grand Cordon du Ouissam Alaoui, the equivalent of the French Legion of Honour for Morocco).

Among his students were many scholarly luminaries: While firmly rooted in Catholic faith, Massignon was also inspired by Islamic theology, which made him a very independent thinker in religious matters, while he avoided any kind of heresy.

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

[19] Christians should therefore see themselves challenged by the presence of Islam to live a life of a simple sainthood, which it is hard, yet not impossible, to attain from a Muslim background,[23] and whose truth they can understand.

[30] In his thesis L'Islam dans le Miroir de l'Occident (1963), his Dutch student J. J. Waardenburg gave the following synthesis of Massignon's precepts: "1°- God is free to reveal Himself when and how He wants.

"[31] A "Catholic, scholar, Islamicist, and mystic" is how Seyyed Hossein Nasr describes him in his homage at the 1983 commemoration of the 100th birthday of Louis Massignon.