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If gunmen hadnt attacked the offices ofCharlie Hebdotoday, killing 12 people (including the provocative magazines editor-in-chief), the conflict over Islamsplacein Europe would still have been Pariss topic one. There were yesterdays rallies in Germanyto talk about, some in sympathy with Frances anti-immigrant National Front, but alsothepublication of the sixth novel bynotoriousanti-Muslim provocateur Michel Houellebecq, out today. A caricature ofHouellebecqgracesCharlie Hebdosnew cover, after all.

The predictions of the sorcerer Houellebecq, reads the headline, beside an unflattering drawing of the author smoking in a magicians outfit. In 2015, I lose my teeth, reads one speech bubble. In 2022, I observe Ramadan. The novel in question,Soumission (Submission), has a plot even more tendentious than those of Houellebecq past. In 2022, the National Fronts Marine Le Pen runs for prime minister against a purportedly moderate Muslim candidate; French leftists side with the latter. The next day, Sharia law, more or less. The narrator, already recanting his atheism, picks up Islam (enticed by the polygamy). The rest of Europe follows, it seems, fashioning a caliphate in the image of the Roman Empire.

No one yet knows (though many have speculated) whether the publication ofSoumissionhad anything to do with the attack, but the author and Islam have alonghistory. The stupidest of all religions, heoncecalled it in an interview a quote that got him charged in 2002 with inciting religious hatred (though a Paris court later dropped the charge).

France has a long love-hate relationship with Houellebecq, who seems to ratelibertaboveegalit(and ignorefraternitcompletely). The novel that precipitated his incendiary interviews was 2001sPlatform, wherein a narrator finds blissful escape in Thai sex trafficking before a terrorist massacre ends the reverie. Like other of his novels (and likeCharlie Hebdo), it rode the French fault line between religious tolerance and cultural pride not only in the nationalistic sense but in a bedrock secularism that led to the banning of the burqa. Houellebecq was too talented a novelist to dismiss and too impulsively contrarian to pigeonhole. He was also, at least in France, too famous to ignore Norman Mailer with a curmudgeonly dash of Jonathan Franzen and the occasional pinch of Ann Coulter. There was always, for the French, something to love and something to hate. In 2010, he was finally awarded the prestigious Prix Goncourt for the relatively tameThe Map and the Territory. That said, he was also accused of plagiarizing from Wikipedia, and the novel did contain a miserable character named Michel Houellebecq, who was brutally murdered.

Soumissionleaked extensively online in recent days, and Houellebecq has already peppered French media with interviews. He made many of the same talking points in a long (and rather hostile)English-languageexclusive withThe Paris Reviewthis week, answering the interviewers accusations that he was stoking shallow controversy and scaremongering. Yes, perhaps, he said. Yes, the book has a scary side. I use scare tactics. He admitted his scenario wasnt very realistic, but envisioned a more gradual Islamist takeover.As it happens, the threat of a takeover like that is the subject of another book, by another novelist-provocateur, Eric Zemmour this one a work of polemic nonfiction about the decline of traditional European values that has been on the best-seller lists for months. Its calledThe French Suicide.

Unlike Zemmour,Houellebecqisnta big fan of the West, either. Look, the Enlightenment is dead, may it rest in peace, he said, announcing that hed also forsaken atheism and was now an agnostic. The whole world yearns for religion, he said, and Islam might not even be such a bad thing. If youre a man, anyway.

Thats the weirdest thing about Houellebecqs novel and whatCharlie Hebdowas getting at with its caricature. WithSoumission, hes out-contrarianed the contrarians. In his imagined battle of civilizations, he might side with Islam. As he told Sylvain Bourneau inThe Paris Review, the Koran turns out to be much better than I thought The most obvious conclusion is that the jihadists are bad Muslims. Obviously, as with all religious texts, there is room for interpretation, but an honest reading will conclude that a holy war of aggression is not generally sanctioned, prayer alone is valid. So you might say Ive changed my opinion. Thats why I dont feel that Im writing out of fear. I feel, rather, that we can make arrangements.

Is he joking? Its entirely possible. So wasCharlie Hebdowhen it ran an issue edited by the prophet Muhammad, promising 100 lashes if you dont die of laughter. Neither the National Front nor jihadists are known for their sense of humor. Houllebecqs publisher, Flammarion, was evacuated today, and Houllebecq was placed under police protection.

See the article here:
What Michel Houellebecq Represented to the Charlie Hebdo Shooters