A Muslim as president of France?

S P SETH

The day of the of the terrorist attack (January 7) on the satirical French magazine, Charlie Hebdo, a novel by a French author appeared with the title Soumission (Submission in English) that soon became a widely read and reviewed book. Its author Michel Houellebecq has written other novels too and is now well-established, inviting controversy. His latest novel, Submission, is particularly controversial because of its timing and the subject matter coinciding, with the Charlie Hebdo affair and a succession of other terrorist events, like the Paris carnage. Being a work of fiction, it boldly or foolishly, pictures a coalition in 2022 emerging out of a near political deadlock in France led by a Muslim party with its leader, Mohammed Ben Abbas, emerging as the country’s president and setting in motion the transformation of French society on traditional Islamic values. And this is all happening peacefully and without any real protests in France.  This fictional account is happening against the backdrop of the violence recently unleashed on France by terrorism. No wonder a novel talking about a peaceful transformation to a political order based on Islamic values was bound to raise hackles.

The novel explores two interrelated themes. The first suggests the progressive breakdown of French/Western societies where communal and familial connections are not working. Francois, the main character in the novel is a 44-year old academic at Sorbonne teaching literature whose life appears drained of any excitement or passion. He does his job routinely and has very little social and intellectual interaction at his work place. He is socially awkward and fails to develop any long-term relationship with women, though he manages to have sex with girl friends but they always move on. One girl, who is Jewish, that has shown some affection for him with potential to develop into a loving relationship has moved to Israel with her parents, because of the fear generated by political developments in France surrounding the success of the Muslim Fraternity party with Mohammed Ben Abbas later becoming the country’s president.

Francois’ sense of loneliness and hopelessness is thus expressed when he says: “There is no Israel for me.” He has no contact with his parents who are divorced and when he is informed by the relevant agency about his mother’s death and the need for arrangements on his part for her burial, he doesn’t respond. The authorities bury his mother in a pauper’s grave, as it might seem. He projects his own sense of loneliness and despair on to the larger French society where many, he imagines, live a life of loneliness like him without social connections and a purposeful life.

And the politics of the country is as sterile with main political parties, Socialists and Conservatives (UMP), going through the periodic charade of elections, governing the country by turn without any substantial change of policies and politics. Francois’ contempt for such ‘democracy’ is brutal when he says,” Western nations took a strange pride in this system, though it amounted to little more than a power-sharing deal between two rival gangs, and they would even go to war to impose it on nations that failed to share their enthusiasm.” In a sense, France appears to have reached a dead end, both in terms of people’s individual lives and collectively.

It is precisely at this time and against this backdrop that the Muslim Fraternity party and its leader, Mohammed Ben Abbes, appear as a moderate political force to give the country a clear direction. And they seem like a breath of fresh air. As the novel proceeds towards its conclusion, it thus sums up (as a fictional account) the state of Europe’s decomposition. It says, “The facts were plain: Europe had reached a point of such putrid decomposition that it could no longer save itself, any more than fifth-century Rome could have done. This wave of new immigrants, with their traditional culture—of natural hierarchies, the submission of women and respect for elders—offered a historic opportunity for the moral and familial rearmament of Europe. These immigrants held out the hope of a new age for the old continent. Some were Christian; but there was no denying that the vast majority were Muslim.” Besides, Ben Abbas was planning to expand the political and cultural boundaries of Europe to include some African/Arab countries, but it was all meant to be a peaceful project.

Francois, the novel’s main character and narrator, who lost his academic job when Sorbonne became Islamic, gets his job back after converting to Islam at the persuasion of the new university president who is himself a convert. Francois (or the author Houellebecq, to the extent he is represented by the narrator of the novel) is very much impressed by the university president’s new life with more than one wife as he puts it, “…a forty-year old wife to do the cooking, a fifteen-year old wife for whatever else… No doubt he had one or two wives in between…” And for Francois this is an ideal society where he wouldn’t need to be looking for his sexual conquests. Like some of his colleagues he would have no difficulty in the department of wives that will be arranged for him and serve him in a submissive (hence the title, Submission) role. In this hierarchical society with structured roles, the woman submitted to man, with final submission to God from all.

In France’s new political world with a Muslim president, the economy is already looking up with unemployment down, as women leave work and given subsidies to raise more children. Which would also have the effect of reversing a decline in France’s population. At the same time, Arab money from Saudi Arabia and Qatar is flowing in to prop up things.

It all sounds very exciting and a neat solution for Europe’s rebirth under a charter of Islamic traditions and values. But it is too neat and hence not realistic. If anything, the right spectrum of European polity is feeding on Islamophobia. One reviewer in the London Review of Books called it “deeply reactionary [but], it is not Islamophobic.” Indeed, Houllebecq appears to have made a volte face on Islam which he had described before as “the most stupid, false and obscure of all religions… doomed just as surely as Christianity.” But in his novel, Submission, he appears to suggest that it might be the solution to the crisis overtaking French/European civilization. Even though the novel has generated great interest and controversy, one shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that it is a fictional narrative and shouldn’t be taken as the pathway to France’s political transformation in 2022 and beyond.