Books on Islam Sell Out in France
A special magazine supplement focused on the Quran has flown off the shelves, and shops are selling more books on Islam than ever after the Paris attacks in January, The Straits Times reported.
"The French are asking more and more questions, and they feel less satisfied than ever by the answers they're getting from the media," said Mr Fabrice Gerschel, director of Philosophie magazine, which published the supplement.
Sales of books on Islam were three times higher in the first quarter of 2015 than this time last year, according to the French National Union of Bookshops.
Mathilde Mahieux, of La Procure chain of bookshops that specialises in religion, said people want a better understanding of the religion that the brutal Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) claims to represent, so that they can make up their own minds.
Part of the interest in France appears to stem from the fact that many of the extremists committing horrific abuses in Islam’s name in Syria and Iraq are of Western origin.
Twice as many books published in France last year were dedicated to Islam than to Christianity, according to the publishing weekly, Hebdo Livres.
And at France's largest book fair in March the biggest seller for Le Cerf imprint, which is run by the Catholic Dominican order, was "A Christian Reads The Koran", a reprint of a book first published with much less fanfare in 1984.
