This article was originally published in Danish on June 8, 2015.

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Michel Houellebecq:
Soumission
Paris: Flammarion 2015

Read by Povl H. Riis-Knudsen

It has been announced that award-winning French author Michel Houllebecq’s latest controversial novel will be published by Rosinante this fall, around the same time it is released in English. The German, Spanish and Italian translations were published around the same time as the original, and one can’t help but wonder why there is this delay, especially when it comes to the English version. A certain fear of the subject matter perhaps. In any case, it wouldn’t be surprising if at least the Danish version is delayed ad infinitum, because the subject is not politically correct.

The book is not exactly a suspense novel. It is narrated by a middle-aged professor of literature at the Sorbonne, whom we only know as François. He is a textbook example of the typical burnt-out intellectual. He despises his fellow citizens and his colleagues, is completely uninterested in politics, doesn’t vote in elections, and has also stalled professionally, as during his career so far he has actually only concentrated on the French author Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848-1907), in whose late work he reflects his own midlife crisis. In his private life, he is unmarried, but is anything but celibate. One student takes the place of another – he consumes sex but cannot give love. He lives in the middle of Paris’ Chinese quarter and gets his food from various foreign restaurants that deliver to his home: he enjoys every cuisine but French. He is his own center, but he also doesn’t see his own life as very valuable and repeatedly considers ending it. He simply has no identity and no national or social belonging – he doesn’t even have a connection with his parents.

While François as a personality is a rather dull character, the same cannot be said for the time he lives in, the year 2022. France is in a state of increasing unrest. There is violence in the streets, actual street battles with police and military, but the media turns a blind eye – it’s simply not reported. People who see it for themselves pretend nothing is happening and carry on as if nothing has happened, and no one puts a name to the problem. Does this sound familiar in any way? The Front National has grown to become France’s largest party and is polling over a third of the vote in the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections. What’s new is that a Muslim party, the Muslim Brotherhood, has emerged and is rapidly gaining ground and is not just taking the immigrant vote. Among the foreigners in the country, self-confidence and demands are growing – and the press naturally treats the new political star, Mohammed Ben Abbes, with kid gloves. Myriam, the only friend François can be said to care about – perhaps because she can satisfy needs other than the purely physical – decides to follow her parents to Israel as a result of the rapidly accelerating changes in French society, to which François spontaneously exclaims: “Il n’y a pas d’Israël pour moi” (There is no Israel for me). This is the white man’s death cry – there is no place where the European can be allowed to be European and live in peace with his own norms and culture. As a European, he belongs to the only race of all peoples and races that no longer has a homeland it can call his own. Everywhere on earth the European is hunted game with no conservation periods.

In the first round of the election, the National Front wins as the largest party with 34% of the vote, followed by the Muslim Brotherhood with almost 22.3%. Both the socialist and conservative candidates are eliminated, but as the FN fails to win an absolute majority, a second round of voting is needed.

After the first round of elections, Francois heads to the south of France, fearing riots, which occur in several parts of the country. Who is causing them doesn’t seem to interest the government – the idea is that those in power have staged them themselves to make people afraid. It would be natural for the French to unite around the French candidate, but that’s not how political life in the septic tank works: the old, “responsible” parties make a deal with the Muslim Brotherhood, whose leader will naturally be president, while they divide the ministries between unprincipled and corrupt politicians from the different parties. Ben Abbes doesn’t care about the traditionally heavyweight ministries of Foreign Affairs and Justice – he first and foremost wants the Ministry of Education.

With this Communist-style popular front, the outcome was a foregone conclusion. France got its first Muslim president and Europe could never be the same again. It is deeply ironic – and far from coincidental – that Francois “accidentally” lands in the small town of Martel in the Dordogne. The town is named after Charles Martel, who, according to tradition, fought a battle with the Moors just outside the town after stopping their advance across Europe in 732 at the Battle of Poitiers, another town that plays a central role as it was in a nearby monastery that Huysmans found his peace in Catholicism, and where Francois later also seeks his peace, but in vain – having first sought it in Rocamadour, a Catholic pilgrimage site just south of Martel. Where the heroic Frenchmen of the past, deeply rooted in their Christian faith, saved Europe from the scourge of Islam, rootless and identity-less Francois is now only trying to save himself, while all of France is handed over to Islam on a silver platter without a single stroke of the sword.

If you expected France to collapse under ISIS-like conditions, think again. Ben Abbes presents a “sympathetic” form of Islam. France is now part of dar al Islam, violence in the suburbs has magically stopped, crime has disappeared, unemployment has dropped to almost nothing as the government gives generous family benefits to all women who definitively leave the labor market to take care of their families, cutting social benefits by 85% over a three-year period. The debt is also paid by the education sector, with compulsory education being cut to 6 years. Education beyond that is a private matter that you have to finance yourself. Public and therefore secular schools are financially starved, while Muslim schools are supported by the Arab oil states, and Catholic and Jewish schools have to find their funding in the business world. Crafts are encouraged and large companies are broken up into smaller units. Nothing is allowed to be made in a large company that could just as easily be made in a smaller one.

Apart from the educational measures, actually, most of Ben Abbes’ program is something that nationalist-minded Europeans could have come up with themselves! Strengthening the family, abolishing big Capitalism, strengthening private initiative – all things that can only benefit the people. The question is, which people? We get an answer to that, too. Ben Abbe’s goal is to transform the EU into a new Roman Empire encompassing the entire Arab world, and while Islamic political victories are spreading to Belgium, intense negotiations are underway with North African countries to join the EU. First Morocco, then Algeria and Tunisia, then Libya and Egypt. Turkey is also on the fast track for membership. This enlargement will further increase the investment of rich oil states in a ‘Europe’ that is no longer Europe. Free immigration will turn it into the Middle East.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has bought the Sorbonne, which is transformed into a Muslim university. François is dismissed with a hefty pension and an open offer to come back – on certain conditions: he must convert to Islam, of course. At first, he declines, but now he becomes even more socially isolated, watching the entire French intellectual elite bow to Islam, which is presented as just a higher form of Christianity – without implying any major differences. Doesn’t that sound familiar, too? Eventually, he gives in – not least because he is promised 3 wives (that’s what his social status entitles him to). Young, imported Arab girls, of course – a quick shortcut to the annihilation of the European population. Life goes on – dress habits change imperceptibly to Middle Eastern Muslim fashion and the opposition seems to have all but disappeared. However, this is probably not entirely realistic – or is it?

The book is frightening precisely because it is so realistic and because Islam is portrayed so sympathetically. It describes the slow, certain death of the people. The doom is quite pleasant – for now, because behind the scenes the Salafists are waiting with their demands. The book bears some resemblance to Jean Raspail’s Le Camp des Saints from 1973, but Houllebecq goes a few steps deeper. In his book, Raspail predicts immigration across the Mediterranean. In 1973, this scenario seemed completely unrealistic – today it has long since become reality. There is good reason to fear that Soumission will become reality, too.

Soumission means submission – as does islam….

Translated by means of AI