Thanks for this, I'd missed it. I greatly admire Houellebecq - in the translations I've read, at least. That a former software engineer is considered by many to be France's greatest living writer has a certain irony, but he writes in the clean and spare fashion of doctors or artists, say.
As to his provocative engagement with Islam, and some people's claims that he's Islamophobic, I'm with Maajid Nawaaz, a British former jihadist, of Pakistani heritage, who now heads up the [Quilliam Foundation] (http://www.quilliamfoundation.org/) on counter-extremism. In response to those - and there are depressingly many - who wish to shut down critical discussion of Islam and Islamism, not infrequently by making claims of underlying racism, Nawaaz argues that we must speak the thing aloud or we'll suffer what he calls ["the Voldemort effect"] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0-vcSoKcj8). The opening of that last video clip, incidentally, has the most chilling juxtaposition of speaking for the right to speak and attempts to close it down.
Thanks for this, I'd missed it. I greatly admire Houellebecq - in the translations I've read, at least. That a former software engineer is considered by many to be France's greatest living writer has a certain irony, but he writes in the clean and spare fashion of doctors or artists, say.
As to his provocative engagement with Islam, and some people's claims that he's Islamophobic, I'm with Maajid Nawaaz, a British former jihadist, of Pakistani heritage, who now heads up the [Quilliam Foundation] (http://www.quilliamfoundation.org/) on counter-extremism. In response to those - and there are depressingly many - who wish to shut down critical discussion of Islam and Islamism, not infrequently by making claims of underlying racism, Nawaaz argues that we must speak the thing aloud or we'll suffer what he calls ["the Voldemort effect"] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0-vcSoKcj8). The opening of that last video clip, incidentally, has the most chilling juxtaposition of speaking for the right to speak and attempts to close it down.