PARIS, France - French and Saudi Islamic groups plan to press charges of incitement to racial hatred against French author Michel Houellebecq for comments and writings they take to be anti-Muslim, their lawyers said on Thursday.
"We are taking this to the tribunal to avoid a fatwa," said Jean-Marc Varaut, one of the lawyers, referring to a religious ruling such as the one calling for the death of British author Salman Rushdie in 1989.
Varaut was speaking at a tribunal hearing in Paris where the groups unsuccessfully sought to stop the television broadcast of a literary television show featuring Houellebecq on Thursday evening.
Houellebecq, well-known in France for the frank sexual content of his novels, was quoted in the literary magazine "Lire" as calling Islam "the daftest religion."
"When you read the Koran, it's so depressing," the magazine quoted him as saying.
The groups, including France's National Federation of Muslims and the Saudi-based Islamic League, pointed to a passage in Houellebecq's latest novel in which the main character admits to a "quiver of glee" when a "Palestinian terrorist" is killed.
Houellebecq rejected accusations of racism and said the whole controversy had been generated by the media coverage of his new novel, "Plateforme," about sex tourism in Asia.
"I deny being racist, have never lumped Arabs and Muslims into one and am offended that certain journalists are doing just that in twisting comments they have not verified," he said in a statement.
He noted the sentiments expressed in "Plateforme" were those of a fictional character, not the author.
Indian-born Rushdie was sent into hiding after Iran's late revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa condemning him to death for allegedly blaspheming Islam in his novel "The Satanic Verses."
Tehran pledged in 1998 not to seek to carry out the ruling. Iran's President Mohammad Khatami said in June he viewed the Rushdie case as closed, although the writer is still occasionally subject to threats from Iranian hardliners.
12:39 09-06-01
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