Always in search of a “cause” for which they could fight, the Parisian intellectual elite is now mobilized in defense of a certain Michel Houellbeque (pronounced Wellbek) who is on trial on charges of “ incitement to racial hatred.” Four associations representing a tiny fraction of the estimated five million Muslims who live in France brought the case against Houellbeque. They want him to be punished because of remarks attributed to him. In one remark, he reportedly said that he regarded all monotheistic religions as “stupid” but found Islam to be “ the most stupid”.
So, was it necessary to file a suit against him? I believe not.
I think the associations that brought the suit will achieve nothing except bigger sales for Houellbeque’s books. In the process, they could also reinforce the stereotypes projected by Islamophobes about Muslims as intolerant bigots opposed to freedom of speech. Since the suit was filed, the sale of his books has gone through the roof. Many people who will never bother to read him are buying his books in a gesture of support for the right to think and speak freely.
Had it not been for the noise made around the trial, I for one would not have bothered to read Houellbeque. He is one of those authors whose works one should “ leaf through” just to assess the ambient mood. A hurried thinker and clumsy writer, he is not worth serious reading. He belongs to a lineage of pamphletists, known in France as the “provocateurs “, whose aggressive language, sensational claims and exuberant mannerism are designed to foment scandals. In a literature as vast and as varied as the French, there will always be room for such writers.
But let us examine Houellbeque’s key assertion. Behind his terminology of street fighters, lies an old subject of philosophical debate: is monotheism the same as monism?
Houellbeque narrates a visit to the Sinai where he reached “a conclusion opposite to that of Moses.” It was in the Sinai that Moses discovered monotheism as mankind’s sole path to salvation. Houellbeque, however, had a sudden sensation that monotheism was a barrier to man’s understanding of a multiple reality.
The Frenchman need not have gone to the Sinai to discover the debate. He could have read Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus and Iamblichus who treated the subject 2,000 years ago. More recently, he could have found echoes of the same debate in Muslim and Western philosophies, both of which are, in fact, continuations of the work begun by Aristotle. Farabi, Suhrewardi and Mulla Sadra have grappled with the issue on the Muslim side. On the Western Christian side, Augustine, Aquinas and, more recently, Comte and Nietzsche contributed to the debate. To them must be added Maimonides, the greatest of Jewish philosophers.
The philosophical consensus is that monotheism is an important step toward abstraction and thus a progress for reason. Without a single organizing principle, no coherent thought systems could be constructed. This is true not only of the subjects known as humanities but also of the modern sciences. To be sure, the single organizing principle may ultimately prove wrong. Ptolemy’s cosmology was founded on the flatness of the earth as its organizing principle. Marx suggested class struggle as the basic principle of his theory of history. Einstein’s theory of relativity was the single organizing principle of physics for most of the past century.
Without a single organizing principle none of those systems could have developed, let alone lasted for so long. All religions represent a quest for a single organizing principle around which a belief system is structured. Even pantheist systems, such as the ones in ancient Greece, pre-Islamic Persia or India, include that principle in one form or another.
Houellbeque’s attack, therefore, is not against Islam as such or even against the three Abrahamic religions. He is against all religions. He does not distinguish between monotheism that identifies “The One” in order to make the many possible, and monism that excludes the many to assert the one, non-transcendental, cause.
Houellbeque is unaware of Islam as a civilization and culture. He says that, although he disdains Christianity as well, he still has some sympathy for it because of the architecture of the churches, the music and the literature inspired by that faith. It would have been better to invite him to tour at least parts of the Muslim world to find out for himself that Islam, too, has its magnificent mosques, music, poetry, and philosophy, and that to disdain it would be an act of sheer arrogance.
To sue Houellbeque for racism is bizarre because Islam is not a race. There are Muslims of all races, ethnic backgrounds and nationalities. Houellbeque’s views should be debated not in a court of law but in the broader arena of public opinion. To call the police to silence him is against the tradition of mainstream Islam that, centuries before the idea of free speech came to Europe, encouraged debate on all issues. Far from fearing criticism, even when presented in a coarse language, Muslims should welcome it. Islam needs neither “death fatwas” nor the French police to defend itself, and its culture and civilization.
As the Muslim philosopher Ruzbehan Baqli wrote: “A thought, even when sacrilegious, is better than no thought at all.” One can never know which thoughts are right and which wrong before one has thought them.
