Charlie Hebdo | France | Schizophrenic Islam | Far Right Nativists | Michel Houllebecq

[Procrustes Stretched]

Charlie Hebdo | France | Schizophrenic Islam | Far Right Nativists | Michel Houllebecq

The cartoons, the parodies, the satire, the fear, the culture and society...

Below is an interesting interview. What is it some people don't understand about the radical Islamists and the Far Right Nativists sharing much more in common than leftists could share with the radical Islamists?

Houllebecq spoke to The Paris Review about the book in an interview published Monday. "Yes, the book has a scary side. I use scare tactics," he admits.



"Like imagining the prospect of Islam taking over the country?" the interviewer, Sylvain Bourmeau, asks.

Houllebecq replies, "Actually, it’s not clear what we are meant to be afraid of, nativists or Muslims. I leave that unresolved."

Later the author continued, "Look, the Enlightenment is dead, may it rest in peace.... only the Muslims are in an actually schizophrenic situation. On the level of what we customarily call values, Muslims have more in common with the extreme right than with the left. There is a more fundamental opposition between a Muslim and an atheist than between a Muslim and a Catholic. That seems obvious to me."

The interviewer, who had been asking about racism in his work, pressed Houellebecq to address those accusations. "When I was tried for racism and acquitted, a decade ago," he said, "the prosecutor remarked, correctly, that the Muslim religion was not a racial trait. This has become even more obvious today. So we have extended the domain of 'racism' by inventing the crime of Islamophobia."


On the cover of Charlie Hebdo Michel Houellebecq apos s apos Islamophobic apos book - LA Times​

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Oh, but wait -- hold on either you right wing apologists and leftie pc-ers... The Left does not get off scot-free:

an interesting interview ..

French-Moroccan radio host Ali Baddou called the book racist:

Houellebecq denied these accusations. In an interview with The Paris Review, he said that the book is not a provocation, and certainly not right-wing fear-mongering: "I accelerate history, but no, I can't say that the book is a provocation - if that means saying things I consider fundamentally untrue just to get on people's nerves," he told the literary journal. He also rejected the interviewer's suggestion that he had anything in common with Eric Zemmour, a French journalist who often comes under fire for promoting Islamophobia.

What rightists and Islamists have in common

In the same interview, Houellebecq praised the Koran and insisted that despite what rightists wish to believe, they have more in common with Islamists than they think, and that his alternative future was more concerned with a dangerous underrepresentation of Muslims in politics in France, which has the highest Muslim population in Europe, than a pessimistic prognosis of the future.

"You can't really describe this book as a pessimistic prediction," the author said. "At the end of the day, things don't go all that badly, really."

In an article for The Wall Street Journal, journalist John Vinocur also played down the hysteria surrounding the book, comparing it with Jonathan Swift's famous satire, "A Modest Proposal," in which the Irish writer proposed eating the poor as a means of solving both poverty and hunger. Vinocur argued that the "hullabaloo" - as he called it - surrounding the book is more a symptom of the overly politically correct left than Islamophobia.

Houellebecq refused to get caught up in the controversy in his Paris Review interview, which is not shocking for an author whose works have been described as pornographic and misogynistic - while still being award-winning bestsellers.

Michel Houellebecq s New Novel Unleashes Islamophobia Row​

 

[Iceweasel]

Never let a crisis go to waste.

 

[there4eyeM]

Every journalistic medium that does not publish the so-called caricature of Mohammed, in order to show solidarity with Charlie Hebdo and freedom of the press, will be demonstrating solidarity with the murderers.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Every journalistic medium that does not publish the so-called caricature of Mohammed, in order to show solidarity with Charlie Hebdo and freedom of the press, will be demonstrating solidarity with the murderers.

never let a crisis go to waste?

irony alert