A Paris principal was forced to resign for fear of his life due to death threats he received after he told a teenage schoolgirl to remove her Islamic veil in accordance with French law.
The teacher asked three students from the Maurice Ravel Lyceum to remove their veils, a request that two complied with and one refused, which caused an altercation.
Threats appeared online in the following days, with a police patrol launched at the school, located in the 20th arrondissement of the French capital.
A cyberbullying investigation was opened and a 26-year-old man has since been arrested for threatening to kill the director online. He is scheduled to stand trial in April.
The teacher, who worked at the school for seven years and in education for more than four decades, announced Friday that he felt he had to resign out of fear for his own safety “and that of the establishment.”
His resignation has sparked outrage in France, where concerns about the safety of educators have increased since the murder of two teachers in attacks linked to Islamic extremism.
The director of the Lycée Maurice Ravel, in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, received threats on social networks after an altercation in February
In 2020, Samuel Paty was beheaded on the street in Paris by a Chechen refugee after reportedly showing students a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad.
And last October, Dominique Bernard was murdered at his school in Arras by a man who witnesses said shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ during the attack.
At a time when French teachers say they fear online attacks and abuse, with many leaving the profession, politicians and school staff have expressed fury and anguish at the headmaster’s bullying.
A teacher at the Lycée Maurice Ravel, who did not want to be identified, told French media: ‘We are shocked, we are shocked. We find it regrettable… But hey, we can’t protect it in any other way.’
The threats began to emerge after the Feb. 28 incident, when the student refused to remove her Islamic headscarf on school property and an altercation ensued, according to prosecutors.
The student filed a complaint against the principal, accusing him of mistreating her during the incident.
She told French newspaper Le Parisien that the director had “hit her hard on the arm,” but Paris prosecutors said her complaint had been dismissed.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced today that the state would file a complaint against the student for falsely accusing the principal of mistreatment during the incident.
A teacher at the Lycée Maurice Ravel, who did not want to be named, said of the staff there: “We are shocked… we find it regrettable.”
“The state… will always support these officials, those who are on the front line against these violations of secularism, these attempts at Islamist entryism in our educational establishments,” he said during the evening news broadcast on the TF1 television channel.
Education Minister Nicole Belloubet visited the school in early March and offered her full support to the principal, deploring the “unacceptable attacks.”
Politicians across the spectrum on Wednesday expressed dismay at the director’s resignation and criticized his handling of the situation.
“It’s a shame,” said Bruno Retailleau, head of the right-wing Republican faction in the upper house of the Senate, on X (former Twitter).
Boris Vallaud, head of socialist deputies in the lower house of the National Assembly, told television broadcaster France 2 that the incident was “a collective failure.”
Education Minister Nicole Belloubet visited the school in early March and offered her full support to the principal, deploring the “unacceptable attacks.”
Marion Marechal, granddaughter of far-right patriarch Jean-Marie Le Pen and far-right politician, spoke on Sud Radio of a “defeat of the State” in the face of “Islamist gangrene.”
Maud Bregeon, a lawmaker from President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party, also pointed to “an Islamist movement.”
“The authority lies with school principals and teachers, and we have a duty to support this educational community,” Bregeon said.
Paris’ Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo called the director to “assure him of her full support and solidarity,” her office said, adding that she was “horrified and shocked.”
The Education Ministry previously said the principal’s decision to leave his position was “understandable given the seriousness of the attacks against him.”
The uproar comes as dozens of French schools have received threats of attack in separate incidents in recent weeks.
Attal has promised to “hunt” those responsible for sending them.
Some 50 schools in Paris received new bomb threats on Wednesday, some of which included a “very violent video,” education authorities said. The mayor’s office said classes were briefly interrupted by security checks.
The prime minister pledged to increase security, including near schools, after the Islamic State jihadist group claimed responsibility for the killing of 137 people at a concert in Moscow on Friday.