- Houellebecq, Michel.
Soumission.
Paris: J'ai Lu, [2015] 2016.
ISBN 978-2-290-11361-5.
-
If you examine the Pew Research Center's table of
Muslim
Population by Country, giving the percent Muslim population for
countries and territories, one striking thing is apparent. Here
are the results, binned into quintiles.
| Quintile |
% Muslim |
Countries |
| 1 |
100–80 |
36 |
| 2 |
80–60 |
5 |
| 3 |
60–40 |
8 |
| 4 |
40–20 |
7 |
| 5 |
20–0 |
132 |
The distribution in this table is strongly
bimodal—instead
of the
Gaussian
(normal, or “bell curve”) distribution one
encounters so often in the natural and social
sciences, the countries cluster at the extremes: 36 are 80% or
more Muslim, 132 are 20% or less Muslim, and only a total of 20
fall in the middle between 20% and 80%. What is going on?
I believe this is evidence for an Islamic population fraction greater
than some threshold above 20% being an
attractor in the
sense of
dynamical
systems theory. With the Islamic doctrine of
its superiority to other religions and destiny to bring other lands
into its orbit, plus scripturally-sanctioned discrimination against
non-believers, once a Muslim community reaches a certain critical mass,
and if it retains its identity and coherence, resisting assimilation
into the host culture, it will tend to grow not just organically
but by making conversion (whether sincere or motivated by self-interest)
an attractive alternative for those who encounter Muslims in their
everyday life.
If this analysis is correct, what is the critical threshold? Well, that's
the big question, particularly for countries in Europe which have
admitted substantial Muslim populations that are growing faster than
the indigenous population due to a higher birthrate and ongoing
immigration, and where there is substantial evidence that subsequent
generations are retaining their identity as a distinct culture
apart from that of the country where they were born. What happens
as the threshold is crossed, and what does it mean for the original
residents and institutions of these countries?
That is the question explored in this satirical novel set in the year
2022, in the period surrounding the French presidential election of
that year. In the 2017 election, the
Front
national narrowly won the first round of the election, but was
defeated in the second round by an alliance between the socialists and
traditional right, resulting in the election of a socialist
president in a country with a centre-right majority.
Five years after an election which satisfied few people, the electoral
landscape has shifted substantially. A new party, the
Fraternité musulmane
(Muslim Brotherhood), led by the telegenic, pro-European, and moderate
Mohammed Ben Abbes, French-born son of a Tunisian immigrant, has
grown to rival the socialist party for second place behind the
Front national, which remains safely
ahead in projections for the first round. When the votes are counted,
the unthinkable has happened: all of the traditional government parties
are eliminated, and the second round will be a run-off between
FN leader Marine Le Pen and
Ben Abbes.
These events are experienced and recounted by “François”
(no last name is given), a fortyish professor of literature at the
Sorbonne, a leading expert on the 19th century French writer
Joris-Karl Huysmans,
who was considered a founder of the
decadent movement,
but later in life reverted to Catholicism and became a Benedictine
oblate. François is living what may be described as a modern
version of the decadent life. Single, living alone in a small apartment
where he subsists mostly on microwaved dinners, he has become convinced
his intellectual life peaked with the publication of his thesis on
Huysmans and holds nothing other than going through the motions teaching
his classes at the university. His amorous life is largely confined to a
serial set of affairs with his students, most of which end with the
academic year when they “meet someone” and, in the gaps,
liaisons with “escorts” in which he indulges in the kind of
perversion the decadents celebrated in their writings.
About the only thing which interests him is politics and the
election, but not as a participant but observer watching
television by himself. After the first round election, there is the
stunning news that in order to prevent a
Front national victory, the
Muslim brotherhood, socialist, and traditional right parties
have formed an alliance supporting Ben Abbes for president, with
an agreed division of ministries among the parties. Myriam,
François' current girlfriend, leaves with her Jewish family
to settle in Israel, joining many of her faith who anticipate what
is coming, having seen it so many times before in the
history of their people.
François follows in the footsteps of Huysmans, visiting
the Benedictine monastery in Martel, a village said to have been
founded by
Charles Martel,
who defeated the Muslim invasion of Europe in
a.d. 732 at the
Battle of Tours.
He finds no solace nor inspiration there and returns to Paris
where, with the alliance triumphant in the second round of the election
and Ben Abbes president, changes are immediately apparent.
Ethnic strife has fallen to a low level: the Muslim community sees
itself ascendant and has no need for political agitation.
The unemployment rate has fallen to historical lows: forcing women
out of the workforce will do that, especially when they are no
longer counted in the statistics. Polygamy has been legalised, as
part of the elimination of gender equality under the law. More and
more women on the street dress modestly and wear the veil. The
Sorbonne has been “privatised”, becoming the Islamic
University of Paris, and all non-Muslim faculty, including
François, have been dismissed. With generous funding from
the petro-monarchies of the Gulf, François and other
now-redundant academics receive lifetime pensions sufficient that
they never need work again, but it grates upon them to see
intellectual inferiors, after a cynical and insincere conversion
to Islam, replace them at salaries often three times higher than
they received.
Unemployed, François grasps at an opportunity to edit a
new edition of Huysmans for
Pléiade,
and encounters Robert Rediger, an ambitious academic who has
been appointed rector of the Islamic University and has the ear
of Ben Abbes. They later meet at Rediger's house, where, over a
fine wine, he gives François a copy of his introductory book on
Islam, explains the benefits of polygamy and arranged marriage to
a man of his social standing, and the opportunities open to Islamic
converts in the new university.
Eventually, François, like France, ends in submission.
As
G. K. Chesterton
never actually said,
“When a man stops believing in God he doesn't then believe in nothing;
he believes anything.” (The false quotation appears to be a synthesis
of similar sentiments expressed by Chesterton in a number of different
works.) Whatever the attribution, there is truth in it. François
is an embodiment of post-Christian Europe, where the nucleus around which
Western civilisation has been built since the fall of the Roman Empire
has evaporated, leaving a void which deprives people of the purpose,
optimism, and self-confidence of their forbears. Such a vacuum is more
likely to be filled with something—anything, than long endure, especially
when an aggressive, virile, ambitious, and prolific competitor
has established itself in the lands of the decadent.
An English translation is available. This
book is not recommended for young readers due to a number of
sex scenes I found gratuitous and, even to this non-young reader,
somewhat icky. This is a social satire, not a forecast of the
future, but I found it more plausible than many scenarios envisioned
for a Muslim conquest of Europe. I'll leave you to discover for
yourself how the clever Ben Abbes envisions co-opting Eurocrats
in his project of grand unification.
April 2017 