French authorities launched a “hate speech” investigation into a well-known novelist who warned about the Islamic takeover of Europe.
Prosecutors in Nanterre opened up a formal legal probe into author Michel Houellebecq over comments he made during an interview back in 2022 about Islam’s growing presence in France. Houellebecq speculated that if parts of France came under complete “Islamist control,” that there could be a violent reaction from the native French.
“When entire territories are under Islamist control, I think there will be acts of resistance — attacks and shootings in mosques, in cafes frequented by Muslims, a reverse Bataclan,” Houellebecq told “Front Populaire” in 2022. “And Muslims will not be satisfied with placing candles and bouquets of flowers.”
Houellebecq was referring to the November 2015 ISIS-linked terror attack on the Bataclan theater in Paris where 90 people were killed after suicide bombers targeted the venue.
“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,” he added during the interview. “Or, alternatively, that they leave.”
Houellebecq later described some of his comments as “clumsy.”
Houellebecq is the author of the book “Submission,” a dystopian novel describing the election of a Muslim Brotherhood-aligned candidate as president of France who then undertakes the Islamification of the country.
Prosecutors are now looking into pressing charges against Houellebecq for “complicity in incitement to discrimination, hatred or violence.”
“A prophet of doom does not wish for misfortune to occur, quite the contrary. His place is not in a courtroom,” Houellebecq’s legal team said in response to the pending legal proceedings. “Michel Houellebecq can only regret the growing tendency to litigate intellectual debate.”
Groups including the Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Between Peoples and the Union of Mosques of France complained that Houellebecq’s comments amounted to an incitement of violence.
“Freedom of expression is fundamental, but it cannot justify everything,” Union of Mosques of France lawyer Najwa El Haite told AFP. “When it is established, incitement to hatred does not fall within the realm of intellectual debate.”
The targeting of Houellebecq comes as France has been hit with a wave of violent riots and arson carried out by Left-wing groups and foreign-born migrants.
