Writer Michel Houellebecq indicted after comments on Muslims and the “great replacement”

The writer Michel Houellebecq was indicted for “complicity in provoking discrimination, hatred or violence against a group of people because of their origin or their membership or non-membership of a specific ethnic group, nation, race or religion,” Le Figaro learned from a source close to the case. The decision was rendered this Tuesday by an investigating judge from the Nanterre judicial court.

The 70-year-old writer was prosecuted by the public prosecutor following criminal complaints filed by the Union of Mosques of France (UMF) and the Movement against racism and for friendship between peoples (MRAP) after comments made in a long interview given to the philosopher Michel Onfray, in his magazine Front Populaire, in November 2022. After a discussion with Michel Houellebecq on this subject in January 2023, the rector of the Grand Mosque from Paris, Chems-Eddine Hafiz, had finally renounced legal proceedings.

“Bataclans in reverse”

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