A Paris headteacher has been forced to quit because he feared for his life following death threats against him after ordering a teenage pupil to remove her Islamic head covering in accordance with French law.
The teacher asked three female students from the Maurice Ravel Lycée to remove their headscarves, a request to which two complied, while one refused, sparking an altercation.
Threats appeared online in the following days, as a police patrol was launched at the school, which is located in the 20th arrondissement of the French capital.
An investigation into cyber harassment was opened and a 26-year-old man has since been arrested for making online death threats against the director. He is due to stand trial in April.
The teacher, who had worked at the school for seven years and in education for more than forty years, said on Friday that he felt he had to quit because of concerns for his own safety ‘and that of the establishment’.
His resignation has sparked outrage in France, where concerns about the safety of teachers have grown since the killings of two teachers in attacks linked to Islamic extremism.
The head of the Maurice Ravel Lycée, in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, received the threats on social media after an altercation in February
In 2020, Samuel Paty was beheaded on the street in Paris by a Chechen refugee after allegedly showing students a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed.
And last October, Dominique Bernard was murdered at his school in Arras by a knifeman who, according to witnesses, shouted “Allahu Akbar” during the attack.
At a time when French teachers say they fear attacks and online abuse, and many are leaving the profession, politicians and school staff have expressed anger and sadness over the principal’s harassment.
A teacher at the Maurice Ravel Lycée, who did not want to be named, told French media: ‘We are shocked, we are shocked. We think it’s unfortunate… Anyway, if we can’t protect him otherwise.’
The threats began after the Feb. 28 incident, when the student refused to remove her Islamic headscarf on school grounds and an altercation ensued, prosecutors said.
The student then filed a complaint against the principal, accusing him of assaulting her during the incident.
She told French daily Le Parisien that she was “slapped hard on the arm” by the director, but the Paris prosecutor’s office said her complaint had been rejected.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal today announced that the state will file a complaint against the student for falsely accusing the principal of assault during the incident.
A teacher at the Maurice Ravel Lycée, who did not want to be named, said of staff there: ‘We are shocked… we think it is deplorable’
“The state… will always support these officials, those who are on the front line and confronted with these violations of secularism, these attempts at Islamist entry into our educational institutions,” he said during the evening news on TF1 television.
Education Minister Nicole Belloubet had visited the school in early March and offered the principal her full support, deploring the “unacceptable attacks.”
Politicians from across the spectrum on Wednesday expressed shock at the director’s resignation and criticized the management of the situation.
“It’s a shame,” Bruno Retailleau, the head of the right-wing Republican faction in the upper house of the Senate, said on X (former Twitter).
Boris Vallaud, the head of the Socialist deputies in the lower house of the National Assembly, told France 2 television that the incident was “a collective failure.”
Education Minister Nicole Belloubet visited the school in early March and offered the director her full support, deploring the “unacceptable attacks.”
Marion Marechal, the granddaughter of far-right patriarch Jean-Marie Le Pen and a far-right politician herself, spoke on Sud Radio about a ‘defeat of the state’ in the face of ‘the Islamic gangrene’.
Maud Bregeon, a lawmaker with President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party, also targeted “an Islamist movement.”
“The authority lies with principals and teachers, and we have an obligation to support this educational community,” Bregeon said.
Paris’ Socialist Mayor Anne Hidalgo called on the director to “assure him of her total support and solidarity,” her office said, adding that she was “shocked and appalled.”
The Ministry of Education previously said the director’s decision to leave his post was “understandable given the severity of the attacks on him.”
The uproar comes as dozens of French schools have been threatened with attacks in separate incidents in recent weeks.
Attal has promised to “hunt down” the people responsible for sending it.
About 50 schools in Paris received new bomb threats on Wednesday, some of which included a “very violent video”, education authorities said. Classes were briefly interrupted for security checks, according to the mayor’s office.
The prime minister vowed to increase security, including near schools, after the jihadist group Islamic State claimed responsibility for the killing of 137 people at a concert in Moscow last Friday.