This is news that will cause difficulties for some parents in Toulouse. While millions of students have just gone back to school, students at the Al-Badr Muslim school may already be forced to change schools. The school, which is not under contract, is being targeted by the school administration for “deficiencies”. According to La Dépêche, the administrative court of Toulouse rejected the school’s appeal on Friday September 3. With no further appeal possible, the institute will have to close its doors. Parents of the school’s more than 130 students have been asked to enrol their children at another school. Samim Bolaky, Al-Badr’s lawyer, told AFP that the Toulouse school board was ” ruthless “.
This is not the first time that the Al-Badr school has come into conflict with the law. In 2016, it had already been sentenced to closure by the Toulouse Criminal Court for “non-compliant teaching”, and its director, Imam Abdelfattah Rahhaoui, had been sentenced to four months in prison and banned from running an educational institution. Finally, in 2018, the Toulouse Court of Appeal overturned this decision and ordered the director’s release, reports La Dépêche. This allowed the school to reopen under the name of a new cultural association. Recently, however, the education authority has pointed out, among other things, the “inadequate control of teachers and attendance of students”. The director of educational institutions in Toulouse, Mostafa Fourar, stated that “two inspections have revealed obvious deficiencies at both the pedagogical and administrative levels”.