“It’s a shame”: the director of a French school was threatened with death because of Muslim headscarves

Gabriel Attal, the former education minister, said the state would file a complaint against the student for falsely accusing the school principal of abuse during an incident in late February, The Guardian reported.

“The state… will always support these officials, those who are on the front line, facing these violations of secularism, these attempts at Islamist infiltration of our educational institutions,” the head of the French government said during the evening news on television channel TF1.

Secularism and religion are pressing issues in France, home to Europe’s largest Muslim community, The Guardian recalls.

In 2004, French authorities banned schoolchildren from wearing “signs or clothing by which students purport to demonstrate their religious affiliation,” such as headscarves, turbans or kippahs, under the country’s secular laws, which are designed to guarantee neutrality in government institutions.

The school principal’s departure comes amid deep tensions in the country following a series of incidents, including the murder of a teacher by a former Islamist student last year, The Guardian notes.

The director of the Lycee Maurice Ravel in eastern Paris quit after receiving death threats online following an altercation with students last month, officials told AFP.

In late February, the principal asked three students to remove their Islamic headscarves on school grounds, but one refused and an argument ensued, prosecutors said. Later, the director began to receive death threats on the Internet, writes The Guardian.

According to a letter sent by the school to teachers, students and parents, the principal resigned for “safety reasons,” while education officials said he took “early retirement.”

In a message addressed to school staff, quoted by French Communist daily L’Humanité, the principal said he had decided to leave “for his own safety and the safety of the school.”

“It’s a shame,” Bruno Retaio, head of the right-wing Republican caucus in the upper house of the Senate, said on TV X on Wednesday.

“We cannot come to terms with this,” Boris Vallot, head of the Socialist faction of deputies in the lower house of the National Assembly, told France 2 television, calling the incident a “collective failure.”

Marion Maréchal, granddaughter of far-right patriarch Jean-Marie Le Pen and herself a far-right politician, spoke on Radio Sud about the “defeat of the state” in the face of “Islamist gangrene.”

Maud Bregon, a lawmaker from President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party, also took aim at the “Islamist movement.” “Power belongs to school leaders and teachers, and we have a responsibility to support this educational community,” says Bregon.

The Socialist mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, called the director to “assure him of her full support and solidarity,” her office said, adding that she was “shocked and dismayed.”

The student filed a complaint against the principal, accusing him of mistreating her during the incident. She told French daily Le Parisien that he “hit her hard on the arm.”

The student is an adult who attended a vocational training school, The Guardian writes.

Paris prosecutors told AFP on Wednesday that her complaint had been rejected.

At the same time, an investigation was launched into cyber harassment following death threats against the director.

In a further show of support, the Education Ministry said in a statement that it would never abandon teachers in the face of threats.

The ministry said “all teams” remained mobilized, adding that the director’s decision to leave his post was “understandable given the seriousness of the attacks against him.”

Education Minister Nicole Belloube visited the school in early March and deplored the “unacceptable attacks.”

As The Guardian notes, a 26-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly making death threats to a school principal online. He is due to appear in court in April.