Nasreddin Lebatelier

Who is Nasreddin Lebatelier?

Nasreddin Lebatelier is the pseudonym of Jean Michot, a Belgian Muslim who gained some notoriety in the late 1990s for publishing Le Statut des Moines in Lebanon in 1997.

This pamphlet included a translation of a short work by the famed 13th-14th century Muslim scholar Ibn Taymiyya, called On the Statute of Monks, which is read by some as a call for the killing of Christian monks if they are found outside their monasteries in a Muslim country. Lebatelier's introduction referred to the Algerian Armed Islamic Group's killing of seven Trappist monks in Tibhirine in 1996. He analysed not only the GIA's justification for the killings but also the Muslim community's consensus which condemned these assassinations, and explained the religious authoritativeness of such a consensus. He was nevertheless accused of having condoned the killing of the seven Trappists by Catholic authorities and media, notably by Marcel Crochet, the Rector of the Catholic University of Louvain where he was employed.

Michot negotiated his departure from the University of Louvain, which paid him a financial indemnity, including 50% of his lawyer's fees. Once appointed as the first Muslim lecturer of Islamic theology in Oxford, Michot faced renewed Catholic hostility, notably in various articles by Margaret Hebblethwaite in The Tablet and in an interview of the same activist on BBC 4, Sunday program. Oxford nevertheless confirmed his appointment.