Michel Houellebecq placed under formal investigation over 2022 remarks on Muslims

Formal investigation

Michel Houellebecq was placed under formal investigation (mis en examen) on Tuesday, 10 November 2026, by an investigating judge at the Nanterre judicial court. The charge is complicity in provocation to discrimination, hatred or violence against a group of people because of their origin, or their membership or non-membership of an ethnicity, nation, race or religion. A source close to the case told AFP of the decision. BFMTV, citing the same source, confirmed a report by Le Figaro, which La Vanguardia also cited. Fanpage reports the offence carries up to one year in prison and a fine of 45,000 euros. La Vanguardia gives the writer's age as 70.

The 2022 interview

The case concerns remarks published in late November 2022 in the magazine Front populaire, in an interview with the philosopher Michel Onfray. The sources describe the author of the novel Soumission presenting Muslims as a threat to the security of 'de souche' French people. In the interview, Houellebecq said the French population wanted Muslims to stop robbing and attacking them, or else to leave. He also predicted future 'Bataclan à l'envers' attacks against Muslims, a reference to the jihadist attacks of 13 November 2015. BFMTV reports that he described the Great Replacement as a fact rather than a theory. Houellebecq's words in the interview, in English translation, were:

“The wish of the French population, as they say, is not that Muslims assimilate but that they stop robbing and assaulting them.”

Complaint and defence

In January 2023 the Union des mosquées de France (UMF) filed a complaint at the Nanterre court against Houellebecq, Michel Onfray and the director of Front populaire, Stéphane Simon. La Vanguardia and Fanpage also name the Movement against Racism and for Friendship among Peoples (MRAP) as a complainant. Fanpage reports that the rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, Chems-Eddine Hafiz, dropped legal action after a meeting. Houellebecq's lawyers, Thibault de Montbrial and Louis Cailliez, told AFP that the remarks contain no call to action, even implicit, and therefore fall under freedom of opinion and expression. They argued that a prophet of misfortune does not wish for misfortune, and that their client can only deplore the growing judicialisation of intellectual debate.

Earlier case and the book

In his 2023 book Quelques mois dans ma vie, octobre 2022-mars 2023, Houellebecq called his remarks clumsy. He said he was a victim of his own stupidity or naivety, and of people who exploit his fame. Fanpage recalls that in 2001 some Muslim organisations filed a complaint over his remarks about Islam during the presentation of his book Plateforme, and that the case ended in acquittal. According to Fanpage, the judges separated criticism of a religion from incitement to hatred against its followers. Fanpage also notes that his 2015 novel Soumission, which imagines a France governed by a Muslim president, was published on 7 January 2015, the day of the Charlie Hebdo attack, whose cover had been devoted to him.