By Juliette Jabkhiro
PARIS (Reuters) – Final 12 months, Sihame Denguir enrolled her teenage son and daughter in France’s largest Muslim non-public faculty, within the northern metropolis of Lille some 200 kilometres (125 miles) from their middle-class suburban Parisian dwelling.
The transfer meant monetary sacrifices. Denguir, 41, now pays charges on the partially state-subsidised Averroes faculty and rents a flat in Lille for her kids and their grandmother, who moved to take care of them.
However Averroes’ educational report, among the many greatest in France, was a strong draw.
So she was dumbstruck in December when the college misplaced authorities funding value round two million euros a 12 months on grounds it did not adjust to secular ideas enshrined in France’s nationwide training tips.
“The high school has done so well,” Denguir instructed Reuters in a park close to her dwelling in Cergy, calling Averroes open-minded. “It should be valued. It should be held up as an example.”
President Emmanuel Macron has undertaken a crackdown on what he calls Islamist separatism and radical Islam in France following lethal jihadist assaults lately by overseas and homegrown militants. Macron is below strain from the far proper Rassemblement Nationwide (RN), which holds a large lead over his social gathering forward of European elections this week.
The crackdown seeks to restrict overseas affect over Muslim establishments in France and deal with what Macron has mentioned is a long-term Islamist plan to take management of the French Republic.
Macron denies stigmatizing Muslims and says Islam has a spot in French society. Nevertheless, rights and Muslim teams say that by focusing on faculties like Averroes, the federal government is impinging on spiritual freedom, making it more durable for Muslims to specific their id.
4 dad and mom and three teachers Reuters spoke to for this story mentioned the marketing campaign dangers being counterproductive, alienating Muslims who need their kids to succeed inside the French system, together with at high-performing mainstream faculties equivalent to Averroes.
Thomas Misita, 42, father of three daughters attending Averroes, mentioned he was taught in school that France’s ideas included equality, fraternity and freedom of faith.
“I feel betrayed. I feel singled out, smeared, slandered,” Misita mentioned. “I feel 100% French, but it creates a divide. A small divide with your own country.”
The college’s long-term survival is now in query.
Regardless of elevating about 1 million euros in donations from people, enrolment for subsequent 12 months has dropped to about 500 college students, from 800, headmaster Eric Dufour instructed Reuters in Might.
Macron’s workplace referred a request for remark to the inside ministry, which didn’t reply. The training ministry mentioned it didn’t differentiate between faculties of various faiths in making use of the legislation. The ministry mentioned regardless of educational success, Averroes had failings, citing “administrative and budgetary management” and an absence of transparency.
The college is in a authorized battle to overturn the choice.
Headmaster Eric Dufour instructed Reuters the college had given the state “all the guarantees” to point out that it revered funding phrases and French values.
“We are the most inspected school in France,” he mentioned.
SCHOOLS CLOSED
Native places of work of the nationwide authorities have closed a minimum of 5 Muslim faculties since Macron got here to energy in 2017, based on a Reuters tally. Reuters was solely capable of finding one Muslim faculty closed below his predecessors.
Within the first 12 months of Macron’s presidency, one different faculty misplaced public funding, pledged in Might 2017 by the federal government of former president Francois Hollande.
Since 2017, just one Muslim faculty has been awarded state funding, in comparison with 9 in whole below Macron’s two predecessors, Training Ministry information reveals. The Nationwide Federation for Muslim Training (FNEM) instructed Reuters it made about 70 purposes on behalf of Muslim faculties in that interval.
Reuters spoke to greater than a dozen present and former headmasters and academics in ten Muslim faculties, who mentioned the institutions have been being focused, together with being censured on flimsy grounds, and that perceived discrimination was stopping them integrating extra intently with the state system.
“It’s really a double standard of who has to conform to secular Republican values in a certain way, and who doesn’t,” mentioned American anthropologist Carol Ferrera, who research French religion faculties and says Catholic and Jewish faculties are handled extra leniently.
Outstanding Parisian Catholic faculty Stanislas has stored its funding regardless of inspectors final 12 months discovering points together with sexist or homophobic concepts and obligatory spiritual courses, French media has reported.
The training ministry mentioned the federal government had elevated supervision of personal faculties below Macron, resulting in extra closures, together with of some non-denominational faculties. It cited price range restraints as a motive for the low variety of faculties provided public funding.
Whereas a number of the 5 closed Muslim faculties taught conservative variations of Islam, based on the training ministry statements and closure orders, the headmasters and academics Reuters spoke to emphasised their faculties’ efforts to create a mainstream and tolerant instructing surroundings.
“There was never a desire for separatism,” mentioned Mahmoud Awad, board member at Training & Savoir, the college that misplaced state funding quickly after Macron took workplace.
“At some point they have to accept that a Muslim school is like a Catholic school or a Jewish school,” he mentioned.
Idir Arap, headmaster of the Avicenne center faculty in Good, instructed Reuters he has unsuccessfully sought public funding since 2020, as he needs the college introduced into the state fold. The most recent request was rejected in February, based on a doc reviewed by Reuters.
“We’re the opposite of radicalism,” Arap mentioned.
In February, Training Minister Nicole Belloubet mentioned she needed to shut Avicenne, citing ‘opaque funding’ discovered by an area consultant of the federal government. In April, an administrative court docket provisionally dominated any irregularities have been minor, suspending the closure order. The following listening to is ready for June 25.
In a reply to Reuters, the ministry reiterated that monetary opacity was widespread at Avicenne, saying it awaited the court docket’s ultimate ruling. It mentioned the college might attraction the funding refusal.
FAITH SCHOOL TRADITION
France has a practice of Catholic, Protestant and Jewish faculties that permit spiritual expression inside the constraints of lay ideas broadly excluding faith from public life.
A prohibition on hijab headscarves in public faculties in 2004 created demand for faculties the place Muslim college students, and specifically women, might specific spiritual id.
State funding was prolonged to Averroes in 2008, in return for oversight, in a push by former president Nicolas Sarkozy to raised combine Muslim establishments.
An estimated 6.8 million Muslims stay in France, information from France’s statistics company reveals, round 10% of the inhabitants. Islam is the nation’s second-largest faith after Catholicism.
There are 127 Muslim faculties, based on FNEM. Solely ten profit from state funding, a report from the general public audit workplace mentioned final 12 months.
In distinction, 7,045 Catholic faculties are funded, the report mentioned. France’s Catholic Church says there are 7,220 such faculties.
Macron’s authorities launched legal guidelines granting powers to native authorities to strip establishments, together with non-public faculties, of funding for failing to respect “liberty, equality, fraternity,” amongst different issues.
In a 2020 speech, Macron described a must reverse what he noticed as radicalization in Muslim communities, together with practices such because the separation of sexes.
“The problem is an ideology which claims its own laws should be superior to those of the Republic,” he mentioned.
In 2020, Elysee advisers instructed reporters monitoring of Muslim faculties and associations concerned with kids was key to battle separatism. Officers mentioned they feared spiritual indoctrination was happening in a few of them.
Rights group Amnesty Worldwide has warned the federal government’s method is doubtlessly discriminatory and dangers reinforcing stereotypes that conflate all Muslims with terrorism or radical views.
CULTURAL BRIDGE
The primary Muslim highschool in mainland France, Averroes was named after a twelfth century Muslim scholar from Spain who helped reintroduce Aristotle’s thought to Europe and is seen as an emblem of cooperation between Islam and the West.
It was voted France’s greatest highschool in 2013.
Reuters spoke to seven dad and mom and pupils who spoke of a nurturing house that took constitutional commitments critically.
On a go to in March, Reuters reporters noticed women and boys learning collectively. Academics included non-Muslims. Some women wore the hijab whereas others selected to not.
Spiritual research are non-compulsory, as is prayer.
In 2019, French journalists and native politicians drew consideration to Averroes over a 850,000 euro grant from support organisation Qatar Charity, which works with the United Nations. Additionally they questioned hyperlinks between members of the college’s board and proponents of political Islam in France.
An training ministry inspection of the college in 2020 discovered the grant to be authorized. However officers and politicians within the Lille area continued a marketing campaign to restrain the college’s state revenue.
In February, a Lille administrative court docket upheld the choice of the native consultant of the federal government to halt funding, largely on the grounds {that a} Nineteen Eighties Syrian guide on the curriculum of an non-compulsory Muslim ethics class contained concepts concerning the separation of genders and the loss of life sentence for apostasy, based on the ruling, reviewed by Reuters.
The Lille workplace of the federal government declined a request for remark.
Headmaster Dufour instructed Reuters the guide mustn’t have been on the curriculum and was eliminated earlier in 2023. He mentioned it was not current within the faculty and had by no means been taught. The Muslim ethics class helped pupils follow religion in compliance with French legislation, he mentioned.
9 pupils, former pupils, dad and mom and academics mentioned the category advocated for democratic, tolerant values.
On a March afternoon, Denguir’s son Abderahim, 14, attended the category throughout Ramadan alongside different girls and boys from the center faculty.
Abderahim mentioned he needed to grow to be an architect and make his dad and mom proud.
“They want me to excel at school,” he mentioned, “to have a good job, a good salary, to take care of our family later.”
(This story has been refiled so as to add a lacking letter in Mahmoud Awad’s identify in paragraph 25)
