Twenty years later, the law banning religious symbols in schools remains a constant battle.
Especially since the principal of the Parisian high school Maurice-Ravel sent an internal email to announce that he was resigning from his position, after receiving death threats for having asked a student to remove her veil in February.
Thus, while the Minister of National Education Nicole Belloubet had already gone there at the beginning of March to provide support to the person concerned, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal indicated that he would receive him this Wednesday afternoon in Matignon.
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A consequence of “no wave”
If the rectorate mentions an
“early retirement”
, the head of the establishment puts forward
“security”
reasons .
A motive which sinisterly echoes the recent assassinations of professors Samuel Paty (2020) and Dominique Bernard (2023), and which immediately called for a unanimous reaction from the political class.
Valérie Pécresse, LR president of the Île-de-France region, thus provided
“all (her) support to the principal of the Maurice Ravel high school who was threatened with death for having enforced the law on the ban on religious symbols”
.
And to call for the greatest firmness towards those responsible:
“His attackers must be put out of harm’s way!”
The leader of the senatorial right, Bruno Retailleau, for his part condemned the tacit “pas-de-vaguisme” – for “no wave” – which has reigned for too long, according to him, within National Education.
The expression was popularized by teachers in 2018 - after a high school student from Créteil held up his teacher with a fake weapon - to denounce the lack of support from their hierarchy in the face of violence.
“This is where small cowardices and big renunciations lead us.
The resignation of this principal is the result of the resignation of National Education and the entire State.
A shame
,” lamented the elected official from Vendée.
François-Xavier Bellamy, head candidate for LR in the European elections, notes for his part that
“the State lets Islamism rule the roost in our school”
.
“A defeat of the State on the Islamist gangrene”
For her part, the double-finalist RN in the presidential election, Marine Le Pen, castigated the law against separatism adopted during Emmanuel Macron's first five-year term:
"supposed to bring Islamism to its knees",
the text
"did not was of no use”
according to her.
And the boss of the nationalist deputies points out the failures of the State:
“This government is incapable of protecting our schools.”
Ditto for the leader Reconquest!
for the Europeans, Marion Maréchal, who is indignant at
“a defeat of the State on the Islamist gangrene”
and accuses the government of financing with
“French and European public money organizations of the Muslim Brotherhood or those close to the Muslim Brotherhood »
.
On the left, finally, the figures of the Nupes are for the moment less stepped up to the plate than the right and the nationalist camp.
If Boris Vallaud, president of the PS group in the National Assembly, expressed his
"sorrow"
, he insisted on adopting a general position on a situation that he finds
"serious":
"Every time a principal leaves his duties, each time a teacher leaves the school, especially because he is threatened with death, it is a collective failure
,” he regretted.