A “Bataclan upside down”. Michel Houellebecq did not mince words in an interview with the magazine Popular Front. The writer’s statements about Muslims are now the subject of a complaint filed by the Great Mosque of Paris. In a press releasethe rector Chems-Eddine Hafiz, denounces “serious sentences (…) unacceptable and of staggering brutality” which “do not aim to enlighten any public debate but to stir up discriminatory speeches and acts”.
Michel Houellebecq said in the interview: “People are arming themselves. They get guns, take lessons in the shooting ranges. And these are not hotheads. When entire territories are under Islamic control, I think acts of resistance will take place. There will be attacks and shootings in mosques, in cafés frequented by Muslims, in short Bataclans upside down”. Or again: “The wish of the native French population, as they say, is not for Muslims to assimilate, but for them to stop robbing and attacking them. Or else, another solution, that they go away”.
“Call for rejection and exclusion”
The Great Mosque of Paris retorts that “the fight against all forms of discrimination is a duty, because they maintain negative and destructive stereotypes of social life” and recalls that, if “in a democratic society, the law allows the criticism of religions” , here, “it is a call for the rejection and exclusion of the Muslim component as a whole. »
And to conclude: “Under these conditions, the Great Mosque of Paris has therefore decided to file a complaint with the Public Prosecutor of Paris for these remarks which it presumes to be an incitement to hatred against Muslims. Michel Houellebecq asserts that Muslims are not real French. The Muslims give him an appointment in front of the criminal court to oppose to him what the law says. »