Michel Houellebecq charged over 2022 remarks about Muslims in magazine interview

Michel Houellebecq, one of France's best-known novelists, has been placed under formal investigation (mis en examen, a step that can lead to a trial) over remarks about Muslims. An investigating judge at the Nanterre court announced the charge on Tuesday 10 November.

The offence is complicity in incitement to discrimination, hatred or violence against a group of people because of their origin. It concerns an interview with philosopher Michel Onfray, published in the magazine Front populaire at the end of November 2022. In it, the author of Submission said the "native French population" wanted Muslims to stop robbing and attacking them, and predicted a "reverse Bataclan", a reference to the 2015 Paris attacks.

The interview caused controversy at the time. In January 2023, the Union des mosquées de France (a federation of mosques) filed a complaint.

Through his lawyers, Houellebecq contests the offence. He says he deplores the "growing judicialisation of intellectual debates". A charge is not a conviction.