The French school hierarchy’s inability to combat militant Islamism was once again made obvious when a teacher was slapped by a Muslim student after asking her to remove her veil, worn in violation of French law.
The incident took place on Monday, October 7th. A student in her final year of secondary school, aged 18, put on her headscarf as she was preparing to leave the school at 4:30 p.m. The wearing of religious insignia is normally prohibited on the premises of a state secondary school. According to the initial investigation, a teacher approached the girl and asked her to remove her headscarf. The student responded to the request with insults, while continuing towards the exit. The teacher then caught up with her and asked for her identity, while preventing her from leaving the building. The student then slapped the teacher, who hit her back. The girl eventually fled, before being caught at her home and taken into custody. The teacher immediately lodged a complaint.
The student was previously unknown to the police, but her father is already known for offences against secularism. He maintains that it was the teacher who struck the first blow. The girl was due to be tried on Wednesday, October 9th, but was granted an extension until December. She attended Wednesday’s hearing unveiled. She will be tried for “violence resulting in less than eight days’ absence from work” and “threatening to kill a public official.” The young woman admitted that she had slapped the teacher but denied having made any death threats. Former Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, MP for the Tourcoing constituency where the incident took place, said that the incident had been confirmed by the school’s CCTV.
The student’s lawyer, Ossama Dahmane, disputed the request for an immediate trial, which he felt was disproportionate for a person unknown to the police. He denounced it as “a procedure guided by public opinion.” Dahmane has previously criticised laws on secularism on social media, describing them as “legally insane” and accusing them of encouraging “ambient Islamophobia.”
Given the date of the altercation, Monday, October 7th—the anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel—the case is obviously highly sensitive. It also comes just a few days before the anniversaries of the murders of two teachers by Islamists—Samuel Paty on October 16th, 2020, and Dominique Bernard on October 13th, 2023.
Classes at the school were suspended for a few days and a crisis unit was set up. A trade union expressed its solidarity with the teaching and administrative teams, “faced with difficult working conditions,” but other teachers supported the student on the grounds of “the fight against discrimination.” On the spot, Muslim schoolgirls supported the veiled student and denounced “systemic Islamophobia” expressed by the involved teacher.
This is a challenge for the new Minister for Education, Anne Genetet, who was appointed in the Barnier government and has suffered from a lack of legitimacy and authority since her appointment, given her unfamiliarity with educational circles. Her statement on learning that the teacher had been attacked was firm, even to the point of grandiloquence: “Threatening a teacher is a threat to the Republic. To hit a teacher is to hit the Republic,” she told the National Assembly during questions to the government. The minister spoke to the teacher who was attacked, and to the headmaster of the school. “I have asked for very firm disciplinary sanctions to be imposed in view of the seriousness of the incident”, she added.
