This literature responds to the demand from female readers who want to be able to identify with the characters they read about. On the Bondy Blog, one reader explains that she was deeply moved simply by discovering a character in a novel who says “Alhamdulillah”. For her, halal romance finally offers fiction in which she can see herself reflected.
When Maupassant Becomes the Problem
The problem is that the creation of this literary space compatible with Islam has become a pretext for rejecting the shared cultural sphere. On TikTok and other social media platforms, some Muslim influencers now claim that classical French literature is incompatible with their values. The criticism is no longer directed solely at this or that novel deemed too explicit or immoral: France’s literary heritage is being subjected to an Islamic interpretive framework.
Maupassant, for example, is deemed unsavory because his work deals with prostitution, adultery or sexuality. His short story Boule de Suif is thus targeted by certain female influencers. It recounts how, during the War of 1870, a prostitute is pressured by her traveling companions to yield to the demands of a Prussian officer holding them captive, so that they may continue on their way. Maupassant’s aim in this powerful work is to denounce the hypocrisy and baseness of the bourgeoisie, who despise the very woman whose sacrifice they intend to exploit. However, viewed through a strictly prudish lens, the work can easily become a text to be banned.
The paradox is striking: this masterpiece of French literature, which has served precisely to denounce moral hypocrisy, finds itself accused of being immoral.
Criticism of classical literature thus merges with a broader critique of French society. Some promoters of halal romance portray France as racist, Islamophobic and incapable of making room for Muslims. In Nous, malgré tout, these themes are by no means a secondary backdrop: the heroine seeks to build her future while confronting racism and Islamophobia head-on.
Here, militant Islam finds itself treading a path not unlike that of cultural wokeism. On one side is a desire to subject fiction to a religious standard. On the other is a desire to subject literary heritage to criteria of representation, race, gender or power. Either way, a work is no longer judged on its literary merit alone: it must first and foremost conform to a particular identity and moral code.
A New Front in the Culture War
The anthropologist Florence Bergeaud-Blackler sees this development as a new stage in the expansion of the halal standard. Asked about the phenomenon, she notes that "halal" no longer refers solely to what is permissible in food. Increasingly, it is becoming an organizing principle for ever-wider areas of daily life. First it was food, then clothing, finance, tourism and education. Now narratives, emotions and imaginaries are being added to the list of what is deemed permissible for Muslims.
From this perspective, halal romance is not simply another literary genre. It is part of a logic of separation: a shared society and a shared culture are gradually being replaced by offerings specifically intended for a community defined by its religion. A proselytizing project is unfolding: in her view, the logic is that of a “culture of replacement”, in which the promotion of a new corpus of works is accompanied by the rejection of the old.
Today, in the publishing world, the search for morally acceptable literature is not unique to Muslims. Faced with the success of dark romance and the normalization, in certain novels aimed at teenage girls, of sexual violence, manipulation or BDSM relationships, the Catholic world has also developed its own responses.
In 2025, Mame Publishing launched Cœur pur, a Christian romance series, as well as Cœur à cœur, dedicated to what they call light romance. Both series target 14- to 18-year-olds and emphasize healthy relationships, respect, consent and the absence of explicit scenes and crude language.
Emmanuel Publishing, for its part, offers the Toi et moi vers Dieu collection, featuring stories inspired by historical Christian couples such as Charles and Zita of Habsburg or Nicholas II and Alix, soon to be followed by Louis and Zélie Martin. The stated goal is to provide teenage girls with romantic role models that differ from those portrayed in dark romance.
These seemingly similar phenomena differ in their ultimate purpose. For Christian publishers, literature tailored for teenagers is a stepping stone: the goal is to protect, to teach discernment, to provide role models and then to gradually guide readers toward great literature. This restriction is not meant to become a definitive barrier.
The question raised by halal romance is less about the existence of moral literature than about the cultural logic that accompanies it. A teenage girl can certainly start with a light romance and then discover Hugo, Flaubert, Maupassant, Proust or Camus. But if her education begins with the idea that French literature is foreign, immoral, racist or Islamophobic, and that she must permanently prefer a body of work compatible with her religious identity, then the romance ceases to be merely a love story and becomes a cultural barrier.
Sarah Doraghi, a journalist of Iranian origin, takes the threat very seriously: “When you want to destroy a civilization, you burn its books.”
