siger Prædikeren, Davids søn, konge i Jerusalem. Det er også Michel Houellebecqs tema, en vestlig civillisation der kører på de åndelige pumper, forfædrenes landvindinger og ikke længere har nogen åndelige værdier, som de for alvor vil forsvare. Der er ingen anden levende tro i Frankrig end islam at konvertere til, hvad hans professor Rediger da også gør. Ligesom den unge Morten Storm, der får tilbudt en åndelig totalløsning i islam og en tid er glad for, at den er – totalitær. Han fandt det han søgte efter, slaveriet, men det ærkedanske i ham slog selvfølgelig igennem. Befrielsen lå i at underkaste sig, friheden lå i ufriheden for en tid.

Det er det gamle tema, at frihedens problem er, at mange finder et liv i åndelig frihed for vanskeligt at leve. Det har kastet mennesker i favnen på hvad som helst gennem århundreder fra alkymi til kommunisme. Islam er ikke temaet, den er kun midlet til at flygte fra frihedens smerte, en universel painkiller, der lige så godt kunne have været alkohol, sex eller morfin.

Hamed Abdel Samad har også meget præcist kaldt islam “et narkotikum.”, som en komplet livs- og en samfundsmanual må være for de forvildede.  Theodore Dalrymple anmelder Soumission i The New Criterion: France’s “Submission”

Houellebecq is a writer with a single underlying theme: the emptiness of human existence in a consumer society devoid of religious belief, political project, or cultural continuity in which, moreover, thanks to material abundance and social security, there is no real struggle for existence that might give meaning to the life of millions.

It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once,” wrote Hume. “Slavery has so frightful an aspect to men accustomed to freedom that it must steal in upon them by degrees and must disguise itself in a thousand shapes in order to be received.” This book is, or could be considered, an illustration of Hume’s insight.

This novel is far from a crude anti-Islamic polemic, however, as many might have supposed it to be from its pre-publication publicity (Houellebecq has expressed himself very unfavorably on Islam elsewhere). It is rather a meditation, admittedly using all the author’s habitual tropes which fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, are susceptible to an infinite number of bitterly amusing variations, on the state of Western civilization and what makes that civilization vulnerable to attack from so intellectually nugatory a force as Islamism which, by all reasonable standards, has nothing of any value whatever to say to the inhabitants of the twenty-first century. In other words, it is an implicit invitation to us to look inwards, to think of what is wrong with us rather than with them. Whether we or they will read it like this, I rather doubt. As to a solution, it is hardly the place of a novel to supply it. But whatever it might be, Islam is certainly not it.

Om den politiske “religion” netop i dag: New Muslim party aims for French election wins. “Politisk islam” er politikernes dobbeltkonfekt.