PARIS (AP) – More than three dozen police raided a small private school in Paris, blocked 92 students inside their classrooms, took pictures everywhere, even inside the refrigerator, and interrogated the school principal in his office .
“It was like they were going into a drug business,” said Hanane Loukili, the principal and co-founder of the MHS elementary and high school, recalling the November 17 scene.
Loukili did not know at the time, but a team from the Cell to Fight Radical Islam and Withdraw from the Community, or CLIR, had arrived for an inspection. The network sweeps schools, shops, clubs or mosques to end “radicalization”. Within a week, a shaken Loukili informed students that his school was closing.
Loukili insists it is not radical, but such operations illustrate the extent of French efforts to combat extremism, as lawmakers prepare to vote on a bill on Tuesday aimed at eliminating it.
The MHS school had an unusual profile. It was secular and mixed, but it allowed Muslim students to wear headscarves in class – banned in public schools – and to pray during breaks. Unlike private Muslim schools in France, where headscarves are permitted, the MHS did not offer courses in religion or theology.
Loukili and others at school say he was a perfect target in what some say is an uncomfortable climate for French Muslims.
Eliminating France from radicals and their breeding grounds is a top cause of President Emmanuel Macron in a nation bloodied by terrorist attacks, including the beheading of a teacher outside his school in a Paris suburb in October, followed by a deadly attack within the city. basilica in Nice.
The proposed legislation aims to re-anchor secularism in an ever-changing France, where Muslims are increasingly visible and Islam – the country’s second religion – is gaining a stronger voice.
The legislation, which must pass the first critical vote, will also expand and facilitate repression.
Along with the bill, contested by some Muslims, politicians and others, these violent inspections are likely to heighten the suspicion that many Muslims feel in a country where the vast majority of Muslims do not have extremist views.
Loukili, herself a Muslim, is well aware of the main problems she and her school faced with fire hazards, but she vehemently denied in an interview with the Associated Press, any connection with radicalism by her or school officials, which opened in 2015.
Only on December 9 did Loukili learn that her situation was more serious than she thought. A statement by the City Hall of Police and the Public Ministry suggested that the closure was part of a growing effort to “fight all forms of separatism” – the word coined by Macron for extremists who undermine the nation’s values in an attempt to create a “counter-society”.
Dragnet attacks such as those launched against the school in Loukili, which were initially carried out as an experiment shortly after Macron took office in 2017, have become the underside of presidential priority, unearthing weaknesses at the local level to nip Islamic radicalization in the bud. . They now arrive across the country, with police officers accompanied by educators or other specialists depending on the target.
In December alone, the teams carried out 476 invasions and closed 36 establishments of various types, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior. Since November 2019, when the program completed its first year, 3,881 establishments were inspected and 126 closed, mostly small businesses, but also two schools, according to data from the ministry.
One of them was an underground school with no windows or educational program, along with sports clubs where preaching and mandatory prayer are behind the scenes activities. Five were closed.
The proposed law and the Cell to Fight Radical Islam program, led by mayors in each region, are just part of a multi-faceted operation to defeat what the authorities call “enemies of the Republic”. Mayors from cities considered “most affected” by the extremist threat were asked to sign a document agreeing to cooperate in the hunt for radicals, such as flagging possible suspects, the AP found.
The Radical Islam Fighting Cell would also gain momentum with the planned law, which would provide new legal tools to close facilities.
“Today, we are obliged to use administrative reasons to close establishments that do not respect the law,” said an official close to the Minister of Citizenship, Marlene Schiappa, who oversees the Cell to Fight Radical Islam program and also sponsors the proposal with the Minister. Interior Gerald Darmanin.
The official, not authorized to speak publicly, was unable to address the MHS school case. The police also declined to comment.
The school’s problems started more than a year ago with security issues linked mainly to the large building where it was housed. Loukili, its principal and math teacher at the school, was ordered to close the school, stop teaching and not run any future educational establishment. She returns to court on March 17.
“I think they (accuse us) of separatism because they needed to set an example,” said Loukili, noting the school’s location in Paris, its fragile finances and the freedom given to girls to wear headscarves.
A mother who had to struggle to find new schools for her children after the school closed said that her son is fine, but her 15-year-old daughter, who insists on wearing a headscarf, had to move to a Muslim school where head covers are allowed, but where boys and girls are separated within classrooms and at lunch.
Her daughter, unhappy with the harsh climate, “comes home with a stomach upset,” 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 France today,” said Rafika, a working mother who wears a scarf on her head. “It’s a real melting pot.”
Jean-Riad Kechaou, a history teacher in the working-class suburb of Chelles, Paris, sees anger in his teenage Muslim students.
“It comes from this permanent stigmatization of your religion,” he said. “In the head of a teenager of 12, 13, 14, 15 years old, everything gets confused and what comes out is that his religion was all dirty and pointing fingers at him”.