France is criminalizing critics of Islam instead of the rioters destroying their cities
France’s cities are burning.For weeks, their populace has been terrorized by so-called protesters, who are smashing store windows, lighting cultural landmarks on fire, and assaulting citizens who stand up to them.And yet the French legal system is spending its time charging writers for having an opinion about such behavior.On Nov.
10, iconic French novelist Michel Houellebecq was charged with hate speech for comments made four years ago in a 2022 interview with Front Populaire in which he criticized Islam and expressed concerns about mass immigration into France. It’s a disgusting inversion of justice — and an indication that a nation being torn apart from within is more concerned with thought crimes of its citizens than the actions of hooligans intent on destroying civilization itself.The supposed hate incident involves mere words — including Houellebecq’s expressed fear that “when entire territories come under Islamist control … [violent] acts of resistance will take place.”The author lives in Paris, where one in five residents was an immigrant as of 2023.He went on to argue that “the wish of the population with French roots” is “for the violence to decrease, for [Muslim immigrants] to respect the law and people.Or, another good solution, for them to leave.”Rather than debate or rebut, the Union of Mosques of France and the Orwellian-named Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Between Peoples slapped Houellebecq with a legal complaint.
They went as far as to name the interviewer and the director of the magazine Houellebecq’s comments appeared in as defendants in their complaint.They’re accusing him of “inciting violence” by expressing his opinions, but perhaps nobody knows better what having actual violence incited against oneself feels like than Houellebecq.In 2015, he published a novel called “Submission,” a fictional account of France electing a Muslim president who slowly unleashes radical political and social transf...