Oxford University has given a lectureship to a Muslim academic who was forced to leave his last post after he was linked to a pamphlet setting out a justification for killing monks in Algeria. Jean Michot, a Belgian convert to Islam, left Louvain-la-Neuve University after he was accused of writing Le Statut des Moines, a translation of a medieval text which explains when it is “permissible for monks to be killed”. He is to begin as a Fellow of the Centre for Islamic Studies and lecturer at the university’s theology faculty in the autumn.

The pamphlet, attributed to Nasreddin Lebatelier, a pseudonym, was published after the murder of the seven Trappist monks in 1996. He uses the medieval text to lend intellectual credence to statements made by the murderers to justify their crimes in the name of Allah. The Belgian university criticised the pamphlet for being “in flagrant opposition to the university’s values” and shortly afterwards Michot resigned. He has neither admitted nor denied its authorship. The Tablet, the grand Catholic publication, says Oxford did not know about his controversial past. Dr Paul Fiddes, who holds the chair of theology, says: “I’m afraid I know nothing about him whatsoever.”

The Times (London) – August 26, 1998 – Jasper Gerard