A Muslim academic who wrote a book which justified the murder of seven French monks in Algeria has been appointed to a senior post at Oxford University – to the consternation of the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales.
Jean Michot, a Belgian convert to Islam, was forced to admit last week that he is the author of the contentious book, Le Statut des Moines (The Status of Monks), which he wrote under the name Nassreddin Lebatelier.
Yesterday the university told The Observer that it had conducted an inquiry into the appointment of Michot who it had not realised had left his post at Louvain-la-Neuve University in Belgium suddenly after it was disclosed that he was the author of the book.
Michot has been made a fellow of the Centre for Islamic Studies in Oxford, an associated institution of the university. The bishops described a report of his views in the religious newspaper The Tablet as ‘gravely disturbing’. Canon Christopher Lamb, Anglican Secretary for Inter-Faith Relations, has written to the centre asking for Michot to give an ‘unambiguous disavowal that he supported the action taken in murdering the monks’.
The seven Trappist monks, kidnapped from Tibhirine monastery in the Atlas mountains in March 1996, were executed two months later, after failed French attempts to exchange them for Islamic prisoners. The Groupe Islamique Arme (GIA), the most militant of Algeria’s rebel factions, claimed responsibility.
Le Statut des Moines is the first European translation of a medieval text by an Islamic scholar, Ibn Taymiyya. It says that under Islamic law it is permissible for monks to be killed when they have dealings with outsiders, instead of remaining isolated.
In a lengthy introduction, Lebatelier explicitly relates Ibn Taymiyya’s text to a communique issued by the GIA which said it was justifiable under Islamic principles to take the lives of the monks.
Later Lebatelier speculates that the monks wanted to be martyrs, saying: ‘The drama could undoubtedly have been avoided with a little good sense, if the monks had followed the suggestion of taking a holiday in France.’
A statement last year on Michot’s departure from the Catholic University of Louvain said the booklet’s contents were ‘in flagrant opposition to the values which the university defends’. The university expressed its ‘total disapproval’ of the commentary.
Yesterday Keith Ward, Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, said a separate inquiry into Michot’s hiring, conducted by the centre, had concluded that the procedures were correct, and that Michot was ‘an outstanding academic’.
Michot admitted he was the author of the booklet for the first time last week. He insisted that it was a mistake to read it as a justification for murdering monks. In a statement he said: ‘I solemnly attest that I have never developed any kind of apology for murder in my writings or statements.
‘I completely endorse the condemnation of the GIA by the consensus of the Muslim community. I have always thought those killings were a particularly tragic event in Islamo-Christian relations.’
Ward, speaking in a personal capacity and not for Oxford University, agreed that Michot had made some ‘unwise’ comments in the booklet – particularly the suggestion that the monks should have gone on holiday to France – but said he believed that ‘nothing he wrote constitutes an incitement to murder or violence’.
The university is expected to announce the results of its own investigation this week.
The episode echoes the controversy earlier this year over the appointment of Alvaro Uribe Velez as a senior associate member of St. Anthony’s College, Oxford. Uribe Velez is a prominent Columbian politician and a potential presidential candidate in 2002.
Human rights campaigners objected to his presence at Oxford because of his vocal support for the Columbian Convivir groups, which are claimed to be little more than government death squads.
The Observer (London) – September 6, 1998
Further Reading:
Yahya Michot et les moines / Yahya Michot and the Monks -Dossier (FRANÇAIS – ENGLISH
