Michel Houellebecq’s novel Submission provides a glimpse of the first post-secular society, imagining a future France that gives in to the rising influence of Islam. In Houellebecq’s tale, France’s effete and enervated elites acquiesce to the ascendant power, Islam, in order that they may remain elites. Francois, Houellebecq’s loathsome protagonist, can find little reason to go on living other than satisfying libidinous urges. Disillusioned and thwarted, he sets out in the footsteps of his dissertation subject (and would-be inspiration), Joris-Karl Huysmans, in search of spiritual rebirth, only to find that Christian culture—for him and implicitly for Europe—no longer possesses the...