Houellebecq put under formal investigation over remarks on Muslims, four years after complaint
Writer Michel Houellebecq was put under formal investigation by an investigating judge at Nanterre court for complicity in inciting hatred. The facts date back to November 2022.
Houellebecq charged following controversial statements on Muslims
Writer Michel Houellebecq was put under formal investigation by an investigating judge at Nanterre court, announced huffingtonpost.fr on Tuesday 10 November, citing the AFP. The charge retained is complicity in inciting discrimination, hatred or violence — four years after the remarks that had triggered the proceedings.
Statements on Muslims in the Front populaire magazine
The facts date back to late November 2022. In an interview given to philosopher Michel Onfray, published in the magazine Front populaire, the 70-year-old author presented Muslims as "a threat" to the safety of "native-born" French people. He notably declared: "The wish of the native-born French population, as one says, is not that Muslims assimilate but that they stop stealing from them and attacking them. Or else, another solution, that they leave."
In the same interview, Houellebecq had also evoked future "Bataclan in reverse" targeting Muslims, in reference to the jihadist attacks of 13 November 2015. "When entire territories will be under Islamist control, I think that acts of resistance will take place. There will be attacks and shootings in mosques, in cafés frequented by Muslims, in short Bataclan in reverse," he had stated.
Complaints filed by Muslim organisations
In January 2023, the Union of Mosques of France (UMF) filed a complaint against Houellebecq, but also against Michel Onfray and the magazine's editor, Stéphane Simon. The Great Mosque of Paris had, for its part, announced in a statement published on its X account that it would file a complaint over remarks it described as "very serious".
A year later, in May 2023, the writer published A Few Months in My Life, October 2022–March 2023, in which he revisited his statements. He judged them clumsy and said he was a "victim of his own stupidity or naïveté". After becoming aware of these regrets and modifications made to the text, the Great Mosque of Paris decided in September 2023 to drop proceedings against him.
Lawyers contest the criminal offence
The verdict came down on 10 November 2026: the formal investigation concerns complicity in inciting discrimination, hatred or violence. The author's lawyers, Thibault de Montbrial and Louis Cailliez, responded to the AFP by contesting the criminal charge retained. "Michel Houellebecq contests the criminal offence he is accused of. The incriminated remarks contain no dimension of exhortation, even implicit, and therefore fall within the bounds of freedom of opinion and expression," they declared.
The counsel also deemed that "a prophet of misfortune does not call for misfortune in his wishes, quite the contrary", adding that their client "can only regret the increasing judicialisation of intellectual debate". Formal investigation does not amount to conviction; it means that an investigating judge has gathered sufficient grounds to refer the matter to a court of jurisdiction.
Source: Google News LU FR