PARIS (AP) – More than three dozen police officers attended a small private school in Paris, blocked the 92 students in their classrooms, took photos everywhere, even in the refrigerator, and grilled the school principal in her office.
“It was like they were going into a drug deal,” Hanane Loukili, the principal and co-founder of MHS high and high school, recalled the November 17 scene.
Loukili didn’t know at the time, but a team from the Cell to Fight Radical Islam and Community Withdrawal, or CLIR, had arrived for inspection. The drag net is sweeping schools, shops, clubs or mosques to banish ‘radicalization’. Within a week, a shocked Loukili informed the students that their school would be closing.
Loukili insists she is not radical, but such operations illustrate the scale of France’s efforts to combat extremism as lawmakers prepare to vote Tuesday on a bill aimed at outlawing it.
The MHS school had an unusual profile. It was secular and co-educational, but allowed female Muslim students to wear headscarves in class – prohibited in public schools – and to pray during breaks. Unlike private Muslim schools in France, where headscarves are allowed, MHS did not offer any religion or theology courses.
Loukili and others at the school claim it was a perfect target in what some say is an uncomfortable climate for French Muslims.
Ridding France of radicals and their breeding grounds is a major cause of President Emmanuel Macron in a country bloodied by terrorist attacks, including the beheading of a teacher outside his suburban school outside Paris in October, followed by a deadly attack at the basilica in Paris. Nice.
The proposed legislation aims to re-anchor secularism in a changing France, where Muslims are increasingly visible and Islam – the country’s second religion – is given a stronger voice.
The legislation, which is expected to pass the first critical vote, will also expand and facilitate crackdown.
Along with the bill, which is being contested by some Muslims, politicians and others, such strict inspections threaten to amplify the climate of suspicion that many Muslims feel in a country where the vast majority of Muslims do not hold extremist views.
Loukili, a Muslim herself, is well aware of the major problems she and her school faced in connection with fire hazards, but in an interview with the Associated Press, she or the school staff vehemently denied any links to radicalism. which opened in 2015.
It was not until December 9 that Loukili discovered that her situation was more serious than she thought. A statement from the police prefect and the prosecutor’s office suggested that the closure was part of a growing push to ‘fight all forms of separatism’ – the word Macron coined for extremists who undermine the country’s values in an attempt to create a ‘counter society’. to create.
Dragnet raids like the one against Loukili’s school, initially conducted as an experiment shortly after Macron took office in 2017, have become the bottom of the presidential priority, exposing weaknesses at the local level to nip Islamic radicalization in the bud . They now reach across the country, with the police accompanied by educators or other specialists, depending on the target.
In December alone, teams conducted 476 raids and closed 36 different types of establishments, according to figures from the Interior Ministry. Since November 2019, when the program marked its first year, 3,881 institutions have been inspected and 126 closed, mostly small businesses but also two schools, according to figures from the ministry.
One was an underground school with no windows or educational program, along with sports clubs where preaching and compulsory prayer take place behind the scenes. Five were closed.
The proposed law and the Cell to Fight Radical Islam program, led by prefects in each region, are just part of a multi-layered operation to eliminate what the authorities call ‘enemies of the Republic’. Mayors of cities considered “most affected” by the extremist threat have been asked to sign a charter agreeing to cooperate in the hunt for radicals, such as flagging potential suspects, the AP has learned. .
The cell to fight radical Islam would also receive a boost from the planned law, which would provide new legal instruments to close facilities.
“Today we are required to use administrative motives to close establishments that do not respect the law,” said an official close to Citizenship Minister Marlene Schiappa, who oversees the Cell to Fight Radical Islam program and is also a sponsor. of the proposed law, along with Home Secretary Gerald Darmanin.
The officer, who was not authorized to speak in public, was unable to discuss the MHS school case. The police also declined to comment.
The school’s problems started over a year ago with safety concerns mainly related to the large building in which it was housed. Loukili, the school’s principal and math teacher, was ordered to close the school, stop teaching and cease running a future educational institution. She will return to court on March 17.
“I think they (accuse) us of separatism because they had to set an example,” Loukili said, noting the school’s location in Paris, the fragile finances and the leeway girls are given to wear a headscarf.
A mother who had to rush to find new schools for her children after the school closed said her son is okay but her 15-year-old daughter, who insists on wearing a headscarf, had to transfer to a Muslim school where headgear is allowed, but where boys and girls are separated in classrooms and at lunch time.
Her daughter, unhappy in the harsh climate, “comes home with her stomach tangled,” said the woman, who asked to be identified only by her first name, Rafika, to protect her daughter.
The MHS school “is a school like me, what I call today’s France,” said Rafika, a working mother who wears a headscarf. “It’s a real melting pot.”
Jean-Riad Kechaou, a history teacher in the working-class Chelles neighborhood of Paris, sees anger in his Muslim adolescent students.
“It’s because of this permanent stigmatization of their religion,” he said. “In the head of a teenager of 12, 13, 14, 15 years old everything gets mixed up and what comes out is that his religion is completely polluted and the fingers are turned towards him.”