PARIS, Sept 17 (AFP) - Prosecutors Tuesday urged a judge to throw out a case against Michel Houellebecq, the French bad boy of literature, who is being sued by Muslim groups for allegedly inciting religious hatred.
"We cannot say that when we express an opinion on Islam it implies that we are attacking the Muslim community," prosecutor Beatrice Angelleli told the court.
The outspoken author, who has provoked readers with his books on sex tourism and moral decay in society, is defending himself against four French Muslim organisations who sued him over an interview last year with the literary magazine Lire.
Houellebecq told the magazine: "The dumbest religion, after all, is Islam. When you read the Koran, you're shattered. The bible at least is beautifully written because the Jews have a heck of a literary talent."
The case and its implications for freedom of speech has evoked memories of the Salman Rushdie case, where the late religious leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, pronounced a death sentence on the British author for defaming Islam in his novel "The Satanic Verses."
Prosecutor Angelleli told the judge late Tuesday: "We cannot say that (Houellebecq's remarks) are biting opinions. Perhaps he is a troublemaker. But we are not here to be moral but to punish crimes."
She then called on the judge to throw out the case. The judge is to make ruling on October 22.
Jean-Marc Varaut, a lawyer for one of the plaintiffs, the Paris mosque, expressed atonishment at the prosecutors' request.
"I do not understand the position of the prosecutors, which is less than the protection that other communities have received," he said. "To call Islam 'the dumbest religion' as (Houellebecq) has done, is a provocation."
Houellebecg told the Paris court earlier Tuesday that he despised Islam -- though not its practitioners.
"I have never displayed the least contempt for Muslims, but I have as much contempt as ever for Islam," the 43-year-old writer of the international bestseller "Atomised" told the courtroom.
"There is a conventional wisdom that says that the founding texts (of the monothestic religions) preach only peace. But in reality the monotheistic texts preach neither peace nor love, nor tolerance. These are texts of hate," he said.
Houellebecq's comments to Lire were made in a promotion for his latest novel "Platform," and came just before the September 11 attacks, in which relations between Islam and the West came under some strain.
He told the court that he had never hated Islam -- "The whole tone of the interview was one of contempt, not hate" -- and he said that anyone who knew him "knows that to get a general opinion out of me is almost absurd. I am always changing my point of view."
His lawyer Emmanuel Perrat said Houellebecq's comments should enjoy the privilege of artistic licence, and that it was a valued part of France's secular tradition that there is no recognised crime of blasphemy.
However Chemseddine Hafiz and Gilles Devers, lawyers for the Paris and Lyon mosques, said in a written submission: "The fact that a famous author can be allowed to proclaim clearly his hatred for Islam in a magazine like Lire constitutes incitement to religious hatred."
Houellebecq's critics say his feelings are borne out in the novel "Platform, " whose main character has an ingrained hatred of Arabs and Muslims after his girlfriend is killed by terrorists.
During the controversy that followed the interview's publication last year, the author responded unapologetically to his accusers.
"It has brought me little but problems, but it just is this way: I attack, I insult," he said.
Several French writers have signed a petition in defence of Houellebecq, who travelled from his home in Ireland to attend Tuesday's hearing.
Next month, a similar case is being brought by French Muslim groups against prize-winning Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci for outspoken attacks on Islam contained in her post-September 11 book "Anger and Pride."