http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,794084,00.html

Calling Islam stupid lands author in court

Paul Webster in Paris
Wednesday September 18, 2002
The Guardian

Michel Houellebecq, whose new novel Platform was released in Britain this month, appeared in a Paris court yesterday charged with inciting religious and racial hatred in an interview about the book, in which he dismissed Islam as "stupid".

The charges, based on a complaint by the Islamic authorities in Lyon and Paris, are being challenged by a group of best-selling authors led by Philippe Sollers and Régine Desforges who have condemned the trail as an attack on freedom of speech.

Mr Houellebecq, who has also written the books Whatever and Atomised and whose eccentric work and lifestyle are the subject of intense literary and social gossip, flew from his tax-haven cottage in western Ireland for the trial.

The charges arise from comments quoted in the magazine Lire that Islam is "the most stupid religion" and that the "badly written" Koran made him fall to the ground in despair.

His books, particularly Platform, were quoted by the prosecution to show that hatred of Islam was a deep conviction.

The father and mistress of the Michel in Platform are murdered by Muslims and in one passage he says: "I had a vision of migrating flows criss-crossing Europe like blood vessels. Muslims appeared as clots which were only slowly reabsorbed."

Mr Houellebecq told the judges that he had never despised Muslims but felt contempt for Islam. He said he had been misreported, but added:

"There is no point in asking me general questions because I am always changing my mind."

He accused Lire of twisting his words and said its editor "got it into his head that I was obsessed with Islam", adding: "The way [the interview] came out was crooked."

His hangdog look in the dock may have been due in part to reading depressing British reviews of Platform, which recounts Michel's adventures of selling sex holidays in Thailand.

The Guardian said it did not add up. The Sunday Times wrote it off as "pretentious, banal, badly written and boring" and the Times said that Mr Houellebecq, who French critics like to bracket with Albert Camus, was no more a novelist of ideas than Benny Hill.

Mr Houellebecq (pronounced Wellbeck) and Benny Hill would probably have got on well, since they are both represented as reactionary misogynists.

He has the status of a disabused working class hero, an abandoned child who grew up with his grandmother, worked as a civil service computer expert, lived on junk food and watched videos, messed up his first marriage and wrote self-inflicting poems.

Then he won international renown overnight with Atomised by slagging off today's decision makers - the 1968 student generation - blaming them for the decline in morals, food, conversation and a generally rotten life.

But his real problem, apart from mumbling and lighting the filter end of his cigarette, has always been a temptation to talk off the top of his head during interviews, letting journalists, in his own words, "hear what they want to hear".

Whether the remarks made to Lire were intentionally insulting is what the court will decide.

The opening of the trial was delayed by a protest by far-right anti-Muslim extremists, who were thrown out of court. But there was no direct reference to Islam from the intellectuals who sat in the gallery (leftwing stars of the 68 generation were noticeably absent), who claimed that the author's remarks were nothing more than a right to freedom of expression.

A petition being handed round by Sollers, the most assiduous self-publiciser among contemporary novelists, drew on the collective wisdom of an impressive legion of dead writers, beginning with Blaise Pascal and running through Montaigne, Voltaire and Lévi-Strauss, who have shocked by expressing outspoken views on religion.

Lire is also charged with racial insult for running the interview under photographs showing Muslims in Tehran and prostitutes in Bangkok, and offering a free copy of Platform to all new subscribers.

Next month the court will hear a complaint by Islamic leaders against the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci for describing Muslims as "a billion rats".

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