The increase in Islamist attacks in France in recent months has particularly affected the teaching profession. State schools have long been a symbol of the French nation and the Republic, which explains this focus by terrorists.
Since the beheading of history teacher Samuel Paty in October 2020, who was murdered for commenting on cartoons depicting the Islamic Prophet Mohammed in a lesson on freedom of expression, terrorist acts targeting teachers have increased in France.
Schools have become the battleground of choice for Islamists, whose influence is growing among teenagers who ingest the rhetoric of jihad via a number of influential social media accounts. The aim is for these budding fighters to bring the battle to school. From there, everything becomes a pretext for stirring up controversy and demanding respect for Sharia law or Mohammed in the classroom.
At the beginning of December, for example, a French teacher was taken to task at a secondary school in Issou, in the Yvelines, a suburb west of Paris, for having made her sixth-form pupils study a classic 17th-century Italian painting, Diana and Actaeon, by Giuseppe Cesari, depicting the goddess Diana and a merry company of nude nymphs.
At the sight of this painting, some pupils ostensibly looked away—as the display of female beauty according to the canons of the 17th century was, in their view, contrary to the requirements of Islam. Their attitude reportedly prompted the teacher to make ‘racist and homophobic’ remarks. All hell broke loose. In retaliation, the teacher was threatened, and the teaching staff announced that they were exercising their right of withdrawal the day after the incident, fearing for their colleague’s life. Education Minister Gabriel Attal visited the school the following Monday to try to calm the situation.
This was by no means an overreaction on the part of the Issou teachers. Since the murder of Samuel Paty, threats of this kind have been taken very seriously. The chain of responsibility in the trial of Samuel Paty’s killers clearly shows that warnings issued before the murder were not taken seriously by the school authorities. As a result, the authorities are trying to be more vigilant.
In October 2023, the murder of French teacher Dominique Bernard in Arras by an Chechen terrorist sadly confirmed that the murder of Samuel Paty was not an isolated act. The Israel-Palestinian war ignited by the Hamas attack on October 7th has provided Islamists already present on French soil with new ‘motivation’ to perpetrate acts of violence. For the terrorists, each successful assassination is seen as an encouragement to continue. They sometimes communicate with each other, as was the case with Armand-Iman, the Paris attacker, who knew Dominique Bernard’s killer. Although they don’t necessarily socialise, they find mutual sources of inspiration in each other’s actions.
On December 13th, the Bobigny criminal court handed down a suspended prison sentence to Fayssal B., a parent who had made explicit threats against his son’s teacher. “I’m going to decapitate him, hang him and cut him open,” he said in the hours following Dominique Bernard’s murder.
On the same day, in Rennes, Brittany, a twelve-year-old pupil, came to class armed with a knife, intending to kill her English teacher. According to a person present at the scene, the teenager brandished her knife and said she wanted to do “like in Arras.”
Day nurseries are not spared from these attacks: the day before, an attack targeted one such nursery for around ten young children in Champigny-sur-Marne. The director of the establishment received a death threat with the following words: “You’re a Jew, you’re a Zionist, five of us are going to rape you, cut you up like they did in Gaza.” The headmistress was unhurt but remained deeply shocked.
Each week that passes brings its share of new violence, undermining the myth of a ‘sanctuary school’ protected from external evils, which has already been severely dented. The new Minister for Education Gabriel Attal, who took up his post in July 2023, seems to be signalling that he wants to take matters in hand, as shown by his efforts to ban the abaya, the traditional Muslim garb that has become the symbol of rampant Islamist proselytism in French schools.
But while a large proportion of teachers expect their supervisory authorities to stand firm and put an end to their outrageously lax attitude towards Islamist militancy, others still refuse to face reality. In what could only be described as the art of choosing the wrong enemy, a few days before Dominique Bernard’s murder, a philosophy teacher in Valenciennes near Arras was pouring all of her energy into writing an educational document to combat the dangers of the ‘extreme Right.’
On October 12th, the philosophy teacher gave an interview to the local press and presented the work of her collective, called “Coordination antifasciste pour l’affirmation des libertés académiques” (Antifascist Coordination for the Affirmation of Academic Freedoms). Its aim, according to the Huffington Post, was to “offer teachers under pressure from the far Right tools to respond, such as training, a practical guide and an information database.” The next day, Dominique Bernard was slaughtered by a Chechen Islamist.