In Paris, 163 heads of schools have made a public protest about the threats to their safety made by “aggressive” Muslim parents. The heads of school, and their teachers, are terrified. They remember the decapitation of Samuel Paty, who had dared to show his pupils — though telling Muslim students they need not remain in the classroom while it was being shown — a single cartoon of Muhammad, as part of a discussion on free speech. Paty’s executioner was not even a parent, but just a Muslim who had heard about his supposed “blasphemy” and arrived at the school from afar to see justice done, by slitting the throat of the conscientious teacher as he walked home.
More on the latest death threats made by Muslims to school personnel can be found here: “A demonstration by 163 school headmasters in Paris to stop death threats made by Muslim parents: They denounce the aggressiveness of the parents and the false accusations of alleged Islamophobia,” Medforth, March 5, 2024:
A demonstration by 163 school headmasters in Paris to stop death threats made by Muslim parents: They denounce the aggressiveness of the parents and the false accusations of alleged Islamophobia
The trigger was the incident on Wednesday the 28th of February at the Ravel Lyceum: a headmaster was threatened with death after he reminded a female pupil that she must remove her headscarf. According to these headmasters and headmistresses, disputes of this kind are anything but unique.
The principle of laicité — the separation of church and state, or secularism, emphatically applied — is a central principle of the French government, and of French education. According to French law, all outward and visible signs of religious identity are banned in state schools. Hijabs are banned, as are crucifixes, kippahs, and turbans, and other signs of a particular religious identity. The headmaster at the Ravel Lyceum was merely enforcing the law, as he was required to do by the government. But the girl he told to remove her hijab went home and complained to her family, and someone — most likely her father — then threatened the headmaster with death which, given the murder of Samuel Paty, had to be taken seriously.
It is important to show solidarity, confirms Nicolas Bray, representative of the SNPDEN trade union in Paris: “There are colleagues who are regularly threatened in their jobs and we support everyone by means of this campaign. It is the issue of secularism that is under attack. There are recent attacks that can be noted.”
These threats are now made with some regularity by angry Muslim parents.Imagine the fear and trembling of teachers who have to tell female students to remove their hijabs, and face the fury of a Muslim father or uncle or brother who may post a death threat on social media, or call on fellow Muslims to avenge the honor of the girl, or may even appear at the school, shake his fist, and warn the teacher not to enforce what the French law requires. What can the teacher, or the school’s headmaster, do? This prospect makes the job of teacher or head of school much less desirable. Some may resign rather than endure this continuing trauma. The education of non-Muslim students is also affected by such an atmosphere of fear.
There were 163 school headmasters out of 380 (Paris intra-muros). They had come to react to the death threats received by the headmaster of the Lycée Maurice Ravel. They denounced the attacks by parents and the false accusations of Islamophobia. BFMTV
On Monday, more than 170 head teachers from high schools and secondary schools in Paris, representing around half of the schools in the capital, gathered in Sorbonne Square. They demonstrated their support for the headmaster of the Lycée Ravel, who had received death threats after asking a pupil to take off her headscarf at school. Nicolas Bray, headmaster of the Fénelon high school and academic secretary of SNPDEN-Unsa Paris, the largest union for education management staff, summed up the mobilisation by telling Le Figaro: “It’s not ‘Je suis Charlie’, but we’re here to make the point that it could happen to any of us.”
On Wednesday the 28th of February, the headmaster of the school in the 20th arrondissement of Paris was threatened with death on social media after he asked a pupil to take off her headscarf.
At the weekend, the unions representing school headmasters in Paris called for solidarity and expressed their concern about the death threats received by some colleagues for applying the principles of secularism. They pointed out how quickly the accusations spread via social networks, putting these professionals at risk. The unions declared that such methods were unacceptable and welcomed the support of the Ministry and the Academy of Paris. Kamel Aït Bouali, headmaster of the Collège Thomas Mann (Paris 13e) and academic secretary of the Sgen-CFDT, told our colleagues: “The trigger is Ravel and the violation of secularism. I have no evidence to confirm that it is a provocation, but we are talking about a BTS (Brevet de technician superieur) student who should have known the rules for a long time.”
The student who had been ordered to remove her hijab had been in the French school system for at least the two years it took to obtain the BTS diploma, so she knew perfectly well that wearing the hijab was a violation of French law. By telling her parents, and posting about the incident on social media, she was deliberately endangering the headmaster of the Ravel Lyceum. She’s a sinister troublemaker, and ought to be punished by the state. Expulsion is one possibility that should be carefully considered. And whoever made the actual death threat — likely a male relative — should be prosecuted. If the word gets out that such behavior will not be tolerated, and will be severely punished, that should concentrate Muslim minds.