Islam in France

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...