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During a demonstration in Stockholm in front of the Turkish Embassy last week, a copy of the Quran was burned in public. It immediately led Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to reinstate his veto on Sweden’s adhesion to NATO, and then the (Dutch) NATO secretary-general to reply that the demonstration, pertained to freedom of speech in a democratic country.
That context echoed the vagaries of Michel Houellebecq, the most widely read living French author worldwide. His work explores the complex ethnic and religious weaving of religious and ethnic diversity brought about by the tidal waves of immigration from Africa, the Middle East and Asia in countries that — until the 1960s — were mostly rooted in their own culture, language and feeling of belonging to a cohesive nation.
The novelist is renowned for an extraordinary flair. In 2001, he published "Platform," a novel set in a tourist village in Malaysia that concludes with a raid of jihadis who storm the place. Early reviewers of the French version criticized the end plot as exaggerated and discriminatory — until the 9/11 “blessed holy raids” on New York City and Washington by al-Qaeda implemented it in real life a few weeks later.
Houellebecq's novel "Submission" — which translates into Arabic as “Islam” — made it even more to the point. Completed in 2014, it was a dystopia that foresaw the victory of a Muslim brother from Tunisian descent at the French presidential election of 2022 — in real life Emmanuel Macron was reelected last year — among a civil war pitting together jihadis against extreme-right nationalists. The book came out on Jan. 7, 2015 — the very day of the deadly attack at the Charlie Hebdo editorial office, which would launch three years of jihadi terror in France, with 272 dead and more than 1,200 wounded, and in many European countries.
Though his later novels focused on other issues, Houellebecq recently had a longish dialogue with French public intellectual Michel Onfray, who is known for his strong “populist” views, in the latter’s magazine Front Populaire (Popular Front). Leaving fiction aside, he went back to the legacy of the deadly jihadi terror on French soil, and foresaw that — due to immigration of Muslims into Europe — the continent would sooner or later find itself in the same situation as the Iberian Peninsula under Muslim domination between the seventh and 15th century.
“When entire territories are under Islamist yoke, I believe acts of resistance will take place. There will be blasts and shootings in mosques or cafes with Muslim patrons, Bataclan attacks in reverse,” Houellebecq wrote, alluding to the Bataclan music hall attack by an Islamic State commando in Paris on Nov. 13, 2015, which left 87 spectators dead. “And Muslims won’t satisfy themselves with candles and flowers. So, things could go rather fast.”
“The will of people of French stock … is not that Muslims assimilate, but that they stop robbing and aggressing them. Another option would be that they leave,” he continued.
When considering demonstration in Stockholm in front of the Turkish Embassy last week, where a copy of the Quran was burned in public, which led in turn to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reinstating his veto on Sweden’s adhesion to NATO, and the (Dutch) NATO secretary-general to reply that the demonstration, pertained to freedom of speech in a democratic country. In that context one could think of Michel Houellebecq, the most widely read living French author worldwide, who was once again displaying his flair.
His work describes in a unique way the malaise in European civilization, individual shortcomings, the clash of cultures between inherited traditions and globalized post-modernity. Houellebecq does not shy away from exploring the complex ethnic and religious weaving of religious and ethnic diversity brought about by the tidal waves of immigration from Africa, the Middle East and Asia in countries that — until the 1960s — were mostly rooted in their own culture, language and feeling of belonging to a cohesive nation.
The novelist is also renowned for an extraordinary flair. In 2001, he published "Platform," a novel set in a tourist village in Malaysia that concludes with a raid of jihadis who storm the place. Early reviewers of the French version criticized the end plot as exaggerated and discriminatory — until the 9/11 “blessed holy raids” on New York City and Washington by al-Qaeda implemented it in real life a few weeks later.
Houellebecq's novel "Submission" — which translates into Arabic as “Islam” — made it even more to the point. Completed in 2014, it was a dystopia that foresaw the victory of a Muslim brother from Tunisian descent at the French presidential election of 2022 — Emmanuel Macron was reelected last year — among a civil war pitting together jihadis against extreme-right nationalists. The book came out on Jan. 7, 2015 — the very day of the deadly attack at the Charlie Hebdo editorial office, which would launch three years of jihadi terror in France, with 272 dead and more than 1,200 wounded, and in many European countries. Once again, and with an impressive acumen, Houellebecq’s fiction had anticipated what would take place in real life.
Though his later novels focused on other issues, Houellebecq recently had a longish dialogue with French public intellectual Michel Onfray, who is known for his strong “populist” views, in the latter’s magazine Front Populaire (Popular Front). Leaving fiction aside, he went back to the legacy of the deadly jihadi terror on French soil, and foresaw that — due to immigration of Muslims into Europe — the continent would sooner or later find itself in the same situation as the Iberian Peninsula under Muslim domination between the seventh and 15th century.
“When entire territories are under Islamist yoke, I believe acts of resistance will take place. There will be blasts and shootings in mosques or cafes with Muslim patrons, Bataclan attacks in reverse,” Onfray wrote, alluding to the Bataclan music hall attack by an Islamic State commando in Paris on Nov. 13, 2015, which left 87 spectators dead. “And Muslims won’t satisfy themselves with candles and flowers. So, things could go rather fast.”
“The will of people of French stock … is not that Muslims assimilate, but that they stop robbing and aggressing them. Another option would be that they leave,” he continued.
That was not of the liking of the rector [president] of the Paris Grand Mosque, Mr Hafiz Shamseddin, a dual Algerian and French national. A staunch opponent to jihadis and extremists, he is a key power-broker in the manyfold and complex relationship between his two countries of origin and residence, and a confidant of both Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune and French President Macron, who recently knighted him in a well-attended ceremony. In his previous job as the Grand Mosque lawyer, he had already sued both Charlie Hebdo for publishing the Prophet Muhammad cartoons and Houellebecq himself, who, in 2001, in a press interview when "Platform" came out, had called Islam “the dumbest religion” — losing both cases on behalf of freedom of speech. At the time, Salman Rushdie had sent Houellebecq a letter expressing his solidarity.
In the fall of 2022, Hafiz had created the Paris Mosque literary prize, with a committee of well-known French academicians and literati, that gave its first award to the autobiography of a destitute Algerian immigrant family gay son, whose upwardly mobile fast track made him senior executive in a major cosmetics corporation. Hence, Hafiz could sue the writer in his capacity as head of a religious institution, while he also conveyed some matter of literary legitimacy.
Meanwhile, another cleric got into the fray: Haim Korsia, chief rabbi of France, the scion of an Algerian Jewish family and a close friend of both Hafiz and Houellebecq, who brought them together. The latter — living under police protection because of threats since that issue of Front Populaire made the news and boosted the sales toward 100,000 copies — recanted his words and said he would reformulate them in a forthcoming book; hence the former withdrew his lawsuit. Though other Muslim institutions in France — notably those linked to Morocco, and arch-rivals of the Algeria-controlled Grand Mosque for the leadership of Islam in France — persisted in the legal procedure, so that a trial would take place.
Whatever the forthcoming verdict, that episode — and the ensuing Stockholm auto-da-fé — exemplified in a nutshell the resilient tensions prevailing in Europe on the issue of Islam, caught in between a significant population of Muslim descent that is now well into its second or third generation, has acquired citizenship and voting rights, and countries of origin that are jockeying for political influence — Turkey, Algeria and Morocco being three examples of such a strong self-assertion. This is particularly the case while Russia's war on Ukraine, the reshuffling of world order post-pandemic, the gas crisis and vagaries of China have boosted ad hoc contractual relations between states, based on give-and-take and political pressuring, in the stead of the alliances of old.
Dealing with Islam on European soil has become a case in point at the crossroad between burning domestic issues and an international system that is growing increasingly disaffiliated.
