The controversy over the cartoons of Muhammad and their use in the educational framework is likely to rebound.
A teacher was suspended this week in Brussels for showing his 10-11-year-old students a cartoon published by Charlie Hebdo showing the Prophet Muhammad naked on all fours, which was deemed "obscene" by his school management.
The information, revealed by the daily La Libre Belgiqu e, was confirmed by the spokesperson for the mayor of Molenbeek, the Brussels municipality where the facts occurred.
According to this spokesperson, Rachid Barghouti, “two or three parents” complained to the management of this primary school that a drawing showing the genitals of the prophet was brandished in front of “children of 5th and 6th primary” (CM1 and CM2, editor's note).
As part of a course on freedom of expression, after the assassination this month of a French teacher who showed his teenage students several caricatures of Muhammad, the teacher chose to show one of the drawings of this lot, already published by the French weekly Charlie Hebdo.
Disciplinary proceedings
Reported to the school director, his initiative was denounced by the latter to the supervisory authority, namely the elected members of the municipal executive.
The teacher "was heard Thursday by the communal college (the mayor -or burgomaster and his deputies, editor's note) and dismissed", explained Mr. Barghouti.
"It is not a sanction, it amounts to launching the disciplinary procedure," he added.
The fact of having shown caricatures of the prophet to young children does not justify the decision of the executive but the fact of having done so "without clear educational contextualization and, more serious according to the municipality, of having shown an obscene caricature in which we see the genitals ”also explains La Libre Belgique.
A new hearing before the same elected officials is scheduled next Thursday to decide on a possible sanction.
"Our decision is based solely on the fact that these are obscene images"
"Our decision is solely based on the fact that these are obscene images, if it had not been for the prophet we would have made exactly the same decision", also affirmed the spokesperson for Catherine Moureaux, the socialist bourgmestre who manages the city in coalition with the French-speaking liberals.
An eminently thorny subject in Molenbeek-Saint-Jean, a popular commune of about 100,000 inhabitants, with a large community of Moroccan origin, has acquired the reputation of being a breeding ground for jihadism in Europe.
As a reminder, the Franco-Belgian investigation into the Paris attacks of November 13, 2015 revealed that several attackers came from there, including Salah Abdeslam, the only survivor of the jihadist commando who killed 130 people that night.
"This must be done in a framework that is a little thought out, thought out"
According to Rachid Barghouti, discussing freedom of expression at school "is important, there is no censorship in relation to that".
But "it must be done in a framework that is a little thought out, considered".
"Showing obscene images in such a brutal way to such young children is not very smart from an educational point of view," he insisted.
“If we have a history class that talks about nudes from Antiquity, we contextualize, we explain why we used the nude during Antiquity,” the municipal official further underlined.
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Information that should find some echo in France where Samuel Paty, a 47-year-old history and geography teacher, was beheaded on October 16, ten days after showing his 4th year students caricatures of Muhammad during a class. on freedom of expression.
He had been the target of social networks and an online mobilization before his despicable execution.