Author: Caroline Brothers
Publication: Yahoo News
Date: September 18, 2002
URL: http://in.news.yahoo.com/020917/137/1vbzl.html
A provocative French writer who
called Islam "the stupidest religion" denied inciting racism on Tuesday
but argued in court the Koran was inferior to the Bible as a literary work.
Michel Houellebecq, being sued by
four Muslim groups and a French human rights group after his comments appeared
in a magazine interview, also claimed in the packed Paris court he had
the right to criticise religions.
The case has become a cause celebre
reminiscent of the Salman Rushdie affair, pitting free speech against religious
sensitivities at a time when public concern about Islam has grown due to
the September 11 attacks in the United States.
He rejected the label "anti-Muslim
racist", saying the term did not make sense, and accused the editor of
the literary monthly Lire of twisting his words in the interview last year
which was condensed from a six-hour conversation.
Lire is also on trial over the remarks,
which the groups bringing the case say insult the Muslim community as a
whole.
"He got it into his head that I
was obsessed with Islam," said Houellebecq, 45, who was softly-spoken and
hesitant in the dock. "The way it (the interview) came out was crooked."
Houellebecq, who lives outside Cork
in Ireland, told the court he had read three translations of the Koran
and several books about it.
"In literary terms, the Bible has
several authors, some good and some as bad as crap," he said. "The Koran
has only one author and its overall style is mediocre."
He rejected statements by the Muslim
groups that theirs was a religion of peace, saying the founding scriptures
of all three great monotheistic religions -- Christianity, Judaism and
Islam -- were all "texts of hate".
But he added that criticising a
religion did not amount to slandering its adherents: "I do not see how
criticising a religion in an acerbic manner involves them as people."
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State prosecutor Beatrice Angelelli,
in court only to
advise the judges hearing the case,
affirmed Houellebecq's assertion that under French law people could criticise
religion as long as they did not attack followers of a faith.
"We are not here...to make judgments
on moral responsibilities. We are here to judge a criminal responsibility
and, on strictly legal criteria, I ask you to drop the charges," Angelelli
said.
A panel of three judges will give
its verdict on October 22.
The Muslim groups -- the Mecca-based
World Islamic League, the Paris Mosque, the Lyon Mosque and the National
Federation of Muslims in France -- accused the writer of insulting Islam
in the Lire interview during the launch of his novel "Plateforme".
France's Human Rights League joined
the four Muslim groups on Tuesday to bring the case, saying Houellebecq's
comments amounted to "Islamophobia".
Dalil Boubakeur, of the Paris Mosque,
told the court: "Freedom of expression stops where it can do harm...I believe
my community is humiliated, my religion is insulted, I ask for justice."
Lawyer Jean-Marc Varaut, representing
the Paris Mosque, said his ideas risked encouraging those who felt humiliated
by his writing to follow Islamic fundamentalism instead of Islam.
Houellebecq, 45, the enfant terrible
of contemporary French literature, is no stranger to controversy, just
as British author Rushdie caused a furore with his novel "The Satanic Verses".
Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a 1989 death sentence on Rushdie
for alleged blasphemy against Islam.
Houellebecq offended the politically
correct left with his scathing criticism of the hippy generation in his
1998 novel "Les Particules Elementaires" ("Atomised" in English).
Houellebecq's publisher Flammarion
has distanced itself from the author, whose comments some say may have
cost him France's prestigious Goncourt prize -- for which he had been a
contender.
Translated into 25 languages, "Atomised"
won him France's November prize in 1998 and the Impac award, one of the
world's biggest fiction prizes.
Losing his case may mean up to a
year in jail and a $51,000 fine.
