The book “Soumission” (Submission) by French author Michel Houellebecq is displayed in a bookstore in Paris.
Photo: Reuters
[From article]
The most recent issue of Charlie Hebdo, the satirical French newspaper attacked by Islamic terrorists, featured a caricature of the novelist Michel Houellebecq.
“In 2015, I lose my teeth,” he says. “In 2022, I will fast in Ramadan!”
The reference is to his latest book, “Soumission” (“Submission”), which imagines a future where the French version of the Muslim Brotherhood comes to power through presidential and parliamentary elections.
Initial reviews of the novel, often produced by those who hadn’t read it or, at best, surfed through it, labeled it as another piece of Islamophobia.
But it seems to me that “Soumission” isn’t mockery at all — it’s a chilling vision of an all-too-possible scenario.
[. . .]
Patriotism, the professor notes, is gone because the elites are dissolving France into an amorphous European mass. Democracy itself is but a sham, a scheme that allows two power-hungry camps of Right had Left to rule in alternance. At times, democracy is used as an excuse for invading other nations.
[. . .]
the little that is left of European traditions of deference for the sacred is now reserved only for Islam, which must be exempted from critical scrutiny in the name of “tolerance” and “respect.” Even when Muslims do something intolerable, Europeans have to tolerate it in atonement of past colonial and imperialist misdeeds. Victimhood is an inexhaustible capital that Muslims in Europe could dig into for generations.
[. . .]
“Islam has the merit of being an optimistic religion, content with the world as created by God,” he notes. This is in contrast with other religions. Buddhism, for example, sees the world as “dukkha” (inadequate) and life as a saga of sorrows. In Christianity, this world is a vale of tears, at least until the Second Coming.
[. . .]
The novel is, you’d think, meant to be read as satire.
[. . .]
A note of comedy is injected into this tragedy by people like President Hollande who keep repeating that the terror attacks had “nothing to do with Islam.” Is Hollande an authority on what is and what is not Islam? Talking heads repeat ad nauseam that France is not at war against Islam. OK. However, part of Islam is certainly at war against France, and the rest of the civilized world, including a majority of Muslims across the globe.
http://nypost.com/2015/01/11/w
hat-happens-to-western-values-if-no-one-stands-up-against-islam/
What happens to Western values if no one stands up against Islam?
By Amir Taheri
New York Post
January 11, 2015 | 6:00am
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