Gordon Mohr quoted:
># French Writer Tried As Anti-Islam, Protest Erupts
># By Caroline Brothers
>#
># PARIS (Reuters) - Provocative French novelist Michel Houellebecq
># faced a Paris court on Tuesday for allegedly inciting racial hatred
># by calling Islam "the stupidest religion" and its holy book the
># Koran a depressing read.
>#
># The case, brought against him by four Muslim groups, is a cause
># celebre reminiscent of the Salman Rushdie affair, pitting freedom of
># expression against religious sensitivities.
Very reminiscent indeed.  Ayatollah Chirac has decreed a death
sentence on Houellebecq and liked-minded fundamentalists have offered
millions of euros bounty for his head, so he has gone into hiding
under police protection for a few years.
Or maybe some handful of Muslims are acting uppity and dragging him to
court under "hate speech" laws make a point about people not showin'
dem da massive respect dat dey deserve, especially these days.
Or maybe some journo is trying to fill column inches on a boring day.
BTW I read Houellebecq's "Extension du domaine de la lutte" recently,
about a depressed computer services dude working in Paris, looking for
love and not finding it, slowing losing his marbles and trying to get
a friend of his to kill a woman, and ending up in a clinic for
nutcases...  Yikes!  Purposely provocative, very depressing, with some
unbelievably boring passages where the anti-hero writes little stories
about animals talking philosophical mumbo-jumbo to each other, quoted
inline in full for pages on end.
It starts out:
"On Friday evening, I was invited to a party with some colleagues from
work.  There were about thrity of us, all professionals aged from
twenty-five to forty.  At one point, some cunt started getting
undressed. She took off her T-shirt, then her bra, then her skirt, all
the while making unbelievable faces.  She pranced around for a few
seconds, then she started getting dresesd again because she didn't
know what else to do.  Anyway she never sleeps with anyone.  Which
underlines the absurdity of her behaviour.
After my fourth glass of vodka I started to feel pretty bad so I had
to go lie down on a bunch of cushions behind the couch.  Shortly after
that, two girls came and sat on the couch.  Those girls are not pretty
at all, the two fat office cows actually.  They go to eat together and
read books about the development of language in children, all that
sort of stuff."
... and it's downhill from there!
R