Submission by - Michel Houellebecq help pls

Submission argues that overarching value systems, like Islam, prevent a culture from becoming too individualistic and apathetic. At the beginning of the book, France, and indeed all of Western Europe, is depicted as a decaying relic of its glorious past. With the rise of social democratic movements like feminism, anarchism, and secularism, it lost its sense of identity and, therefore, collapsed. Submission argues that the rejection of Catholicism and its traditional values, was the starting point of such movements.

The author, Michel Houellebecq, draws a direct line between the values of the nationalist French movement to those of Islam. Indeed, he presents them as one in the same. Nativists, like Godfroy Lempereur, believe, like the Muslim Brotherhood, that a return to a patriarchal value system is necessary for a nation to survive. Lempereur agrees with the Muslim Brotherhood’s opinion that the most powerful portion of society is always the portion with the highest birth rate. Monotheistic societies have “less education among women, less hedonism, and individualism” and therefore couples have more children.

France’s past, before the rise of social democracy, is depicted throughout the book through historical sites, most importantly the Catholic city of Rocamadour. Alain Tanneur promised François that at Rocamadour he would realize “what a great civilization Medieval Christendom really was.” (131) Though Catholicism is, for the most part, portrayed in a positive light throughout Submission, it is not the means for the nation of France’s salvation. François’s disappointing trip to Ligugé Abbey in Part IV paints Christianity as a once great, but now irrelevant, religion. Characters like Robert Rediger, see the proliferation of Islam as a chance for Europe to return to a traditional, unified culture. Furthermore, Islam is not depicted as a force bent on erasing French culture. On the contrary, as Alain Tanneur explained to François, French Catholics have “everything to gain!” under the Muslim Brotherhood (127). He elaborated that they would increase funding for Catholic churches as “the thing they fear and hate - isn’t Catholicism. It’s secularism. It’s laicism.” (127)

The nation of France, is therefore revitalized when Islam takes the place of Catholicism as its religious/moral center. Not only are both women and men happier, but France enjoys an era of economic prosperity and global influence. This is because Mohammed Ben Abbes uses Islam in the same way that native Franch rulers used Christianity in Medeival times: as a unifying, empire-building force. As Alain Tanneur explained to François, Ben Abbes modeled himself after the Roman Emperor Augustus, and through diplomacy “was trying to accomplish, in one generation, [...] what had taken the Romans centuries.” (241)