In August this year Salman Rushdie was stabbed multiple times. The novelist survived the attack, to the outward relief of the West. Prominent figures from the world of religion, politics and the arts offered their unqualified support to Rushdie as he lay in a New York hospital, recovering from the 12 knife wounds to his body.
The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, whose city in recent years has been targeted on several occasions by Islamist extremists, tweeted her support for Rushdie, a writer she described as ‘inspiring and a free man’.
The rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, Chems-Eddine Hafiz,published an open letter to Rushdie, in which he expressed his horror at the attack and declared:
‘I am writing to you from France, the country of writers and artists, of openness and free conscience. I have the honour of leading one of its lanterns, the Grand Mosque of Paris, from which we spread to the whole world a message of peace, tolerance and brotherhood, that of true Islam.’
This week the rector issued a statement about another of the West’s literary giants, the French writer Michel Houellebecq, winner of the 2010 Goncourt prize (France’s highest literary honour) and one of the very few contemporary novelists courageous enough to write critically of Islam.
Houellebecq’s 2015 book, Submission, depicted an Islamic political party winning the 2022 presidential election and, prior to publication, it caused outrage among the Parisian bien-pensants. It was published on January 7, a couple of hours before the staff of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo were slaughtered by Islamist gunmen in their Paris office.
In this week’s statement, Chems-Eddine Hafiz let it be known that he has filed a legal complaint against Houellebecq because of what he described as his ‘very grave comments he made about Muslims in France’ in a recent interview with the left-wing philosopher Michel Onfray. In November the pair – two of the last remaining genuine intellectuals in France – had a wide-ranging conversation and Islam was one subject they discussed.
At one point Houellebecq touched on the theme of Submission, envisaging a France that is riven by violent factions. ‘When entire territories are under Islamic control, I think that acts of resistance will take place,’ said the novelist. ‘There will be attacks and shootings in mosques, in cafés frequented by Muslims, in short Bataclan in reverse.’ Hafiz took exception to Houellebecq’s hypothesis of future terrorist attacks by non-Muslims, overlooking the horrendous incident last week in Paris when a Frenchman who said he ‘hated’ foreigners allegedly shot dead three Kurds.
The rector also took offence to Houellebecq’s claim that that the ‘wish of the native French population… is not that Muslims assimilate, but that they stop robbing and assaulting them. Or else, another solution, that they leave.’
These are controversial remarks but this is Michel Houellebecq, a man routinely depicted at home and abroad as the ‘enfant terrible’ of French literature. When he received the Legion of Honour from Emmanuel Macron in 2019, the novelist was described by one broadcaster as a writer who ‘continues to provoke outrage with blunt, often pungent comments on religion, politics and society.’
Hafiz is supported in his complaint by Anne Hidalgo, who is less willing to champion Houellebecq’s right to freedom of expression than she does Rushdie’s. The same of course applies to the rector, who no longer seems to take pride in living in a country of ‘openness and free conscience’.
Houellebecq’s comments were controversial but were they, as the rector claims, ‘inciteful’? The novelist painted a characteristically bleak picture but at no point did he encourage non-Muslims to attack Muslims. He was just being his usual pessimistic self.
As an op-ed in Le Figaro put it this week, ‘as far as we know, pessimism is not yet an offence or a crime.’
By filing a legal complaint, Hafiz has not only revealed his hypocrisy but he has reinforced the main thrust of Houellebecq’s argument: that Islam is incompatible with the liberal West. The rector would have been better advised to challenge the novelist to a public debate, a meeting of minds in a spirit of his cherished ‘openness and free conscience’.
Instead, he appears to want Houellebecq silenced and any future debate on Islam and French Muslims censored.
It would be a terrible day for free speech in France if Hafiz won his suit against Houellebecq but, more disturbingly, Le Figaro fears that ‘this criminal complaint makes Houellebecq a target…and [he] risks becoming the next Salman Rushdie.’
Following the publication of Submission, and the attack on Charlie Hebdo, Houellebecq was placed under police protection. In an interview the same year he said of the targeting of the magazine’s staff, ‘I was sad, but I wasn’t surprised.’
What a tragedy for the West if we were ever forced to speak in similar terms of Michel Houellebecq.
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