Noted French novelist Michel Houellebecq was indicted this week on hate speech charges in Paris, with a judge accusing the 70-year-old writer of “complicity in incitement to discrimination, hatred or violence” aimed at Muslims.
Mr. Houellebecq, whose controversial novel “Submission” imagines a future France under a form of Islamic law, was charged Tuesday based on a November 2022 interview with the French magazine Front Populaire. He predicted that armed resistance would follow if French territories fell under Muslim control, including attacks and shootings at mosques.
Mr. Houellebecq described it as a “reverse Bataclan,” referring to the coordinated Islamic terror attacks that killed 130 in November 2015 in Paris. He described Muslims as a threat to the security of the French people.
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“What the native French population, as they say, wants is not for Muslims to assimilate but for them to stop stealing from and attacking them. Or alternatively, that they leave,” Mr. Houellebecq said, according to France 24 television.
His lawyers criticized the indictment, saying Mr. Houellebecq’s statements contained no incitement to violence.
“A prophet of doom does not wish for misfortune to occur, quite the contrary. His place is not in a courtroom,” attorneys Thibault de Montbrial and Louis Cailliez said in a statement to Agence France-Presse. “Michel Houellebecq can only regret the growing tendency to litigate intellectual debate.”
His criminal indictment came even as tens of thousands of people continued weekslong rioting throughout France.
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