National Education must recognize the Islamist offensive at school and respond firmly to it.
Public schools are the subject of a new planned and concerted political offensive, orchestrated by Islamist networks, which use teenagers to attack the law of March 15, 2004 “To frame, in application of the principle of secularism, the wearing of placards or clothes that manifest a religious affiliation in public schools, colleges and high schools”.
Since the start of the new school year, an epidemic of wearing religious symbols (abayas or qamis) and attempts to pray on the school premises has affected some students.
It is propagated by social networks and raises challenges openly against the education code, which prohibits it “Behaviors that constitute pressure on students’ beliefs or attempts at indoctrination” (…) “in public schools and local public educational institutions, in their immediate vicinity and during any activity related to education. “
The provocations multiply and the religious claims take on an ever more radical character, in Nanterre, Clermont-Ferrand and elsewhere. Denounced by secular associations in 2015, this offensive is growing at a time when in Iran, through their struggle, the women and men of this country are revealing the patriarchal, sexist, fundamentalist nature of the female veil. Recently two official notes (Interministerial Committee for the Prevention of Delinquency and Radicalization and Territorial Intelligence) have alerted the state services of this“Salafo-Brotherhood entrance strategy” (named after the main trends of Islam) using social networks to manipulate young people.
Almost 20 years later, the observation made in 2003 by the Stasi report remains fundamental: “Yes, extremist groups are working in our country to test the resistance of the Republic and to push some young people to reject France and its values”.
The public school fights to preserve the neutrality of its territory, a privileged place of emancipation and freedom of conscience. Wearers of religious clothing are too often authorized by the authorities and overwhelmed, failed or even complicit in the educational teams to enter the institutions.
The commemoration of the assassination of Samuel Paty by a fanatical Islamist on October 16, 2020, gives a particularly worrying dimension to what is no longer the responsibility of “The spirit of contradiction typical of young people”.
This attack showed that, in some schools, a poisoned atmosphere, silently maintained by Islamism, can reign, which the state services have not been able to properly appreciate or counter.
The law of 15 March 2004 was intended as a clear response to this threat to the Republic through its school. It brought tranquility back to the factories and protected the freedom of girls for nearly twenty years. It put an end to 15 years of renunciations before the offensive started in 1989 by Creil’s scarves, when Minister Jospin, evading the responsibility incumbent on the State, sent them, in a circular of 12 December 1989, to the heads of the establishment and the educational teams, entrusting them with the decision on a case-by-case basis.
But what does the Minister of National Education, Pap Ndiaye, say today? He sends to the plant managers the empirical evaluation of the religious character or otherwise of the clothing, beyond the few cases provided for by the application circular of the 2004 law, that is, according to strictly subjective criteria. It is up to these agents to manage, on the front line, pressure, aggressive behavior, tensions between students and managers or, in English jargon, accidents, which increased significantly in September.
The minister must take stock of the problem. The secular Republic must, with his voice, make the firmness of its principles heard. Institutions and schools need clear national guidelines. Weakness, pusillanimity, the avoidance strategy have never had the effect of galvanizing the opponents of secularism.
The signatory associations demand a firm secular and republican response, in compliance with the law, which guarantees fraternity and allows the emancipation process operating in the school of the Republic.
However, these immediate measures could not do without a massive plan for the republican reconquest of the districts, so that the school is not the place where one tries in vain to resolve the increasingly urgent social question, renouncing secularism. The Republic is indivisible secular, democratic and social. Every word counts.
Joint press release Unity of the Laity and Union of Lay Families
