The Islamists take France
Ian Hunter on Michel Houellebecq’s novel Submission
Michel Houellebecq’s novel Submission paints a dreary picture of life on a Western university campus that, as someone who has spent most of his professional life in universities, actually rings quite true. The most chilling part of this tale, however, involves an Islamist party winning a democratic national election — a fictional scenario that may end up being closer to the truth than many of us would like to believe.
Submission is set in the year 2022. Its protagonist, Francois, is a disillusioned, middle-aged professor of literature at the Sorbonne in Paris, who takes up with a different female student each year, eats microwaved food, watches online porn and has nothing of substance to say to students who, in any case, do not want to learn. His employer, the university, is corrupt and morally vacuous, operating only within the iron strictures of political correctness (“the Conference of University Presidents had recently joined a boycott against academic exchanges with Israeli scholars”). Francois is surrounded at work by narcissistic windbags and dedicated careerists.
As the novel opens, France is in the midst of a general election hotly contested by three parties — the governing Socialists, the right-wing National Front and the Muslim Brotherhood. The Islamists and Socialists finish in a dead heat; in the subsequent runoff election, the Muslim Brotherhood takes office.
The next morning, Francois observes that the students seem “tense and anxious,” except for girls wearing burkas, who “moved slowly and with new confidence, walking down the very middle of the hallway, three by three, as if they were already in charge.” Soon, some of the buildings on campus are emblazoned with a gold star and a crescent moon
In office, the Islamists demonstrate their priorities: “What they care about is birthrate and education. To them it’s simple — whichever segment of the population has the highest birthrate, and does the best job of transmitting its values, wins. If you control the children, you control the future.”
Without fanfare, Sharia law is introduced throughout France. Francois (himself “about as political as a bath towel”) discovers what Islam (the word means “submission”) is like in practice — academic survival, even advancement, will be possible for him but only if he converts to Islam. Francois, an atheist, has no particular reason not to convert, but before he can make any decision about it, the Sorbonne is closed, mid term, and no date is announced for its reopening.
Houellebecq is a skillful writer ( his previous novel The Map and the Territory won the Prix Goncourt in 2010), capable of such a delicious sentence fragment as this: “a strange oppressive mood settled over France, a kind of suffocating despair, all- encompassing but shot through with glints of insurrection.” The glints are quickly extinguished.
With nothing to do Francois embarks on a road trip and ends up at the Benedictine Abbey, “the oldest Christian monastery in the West.” Here he observes the disciplined daily life of the monks, their working days punctuated by the offices and the Mass. But after a few days, “I no longer knew the meaning of my presence in this place,” and so he returns to Paris.
On Jan. 7, 2015, Houellebecq’s Submission was published in Paris. The next day, Houellebecq’s face was on the cover of the weekly satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. And the day after that, two Islamist gunmen visited the offices of Charlie Hebdo and murdered 11 people, including the editor. Houellebecq went into hiding and has not been seen publicly since.
More recently, of course, Islamists struck Paris again. French President François Hollande declared it to be an “act of war” and promised a swift and merciless response. But we have all heard such declarations from politicians before — like U. S. President Barack Obama’s infamous “red line,” they seem always to be ineffectual.
The message I took from the novel Submission is that it is already too late. Western civilization has lost its core beliefs, and its will to survive. It is over. Fact or fiction? I think we are about to find out.