Was the decision of the prefect of Alpes-Maritimes taken too quickly? This is what the decision of the Nice administrative court, which suspended the order taken on March 14 by Hugues Moutouh imposing the immediate closure of the Avicenna Muslim college, suggests. Seized in summary proceedings, the court considered that the closure due to “opaque financing” ordered by the prefect was “not likely to justify the definitive closure of the establishment”, which accommodates around a hundred students.
According to the administrative court, “errors and inaccuracies” were noted in the accounting of this private college outside of the contract opened in 2015. In accordance with the 2021 law against separatism, the college must inform the administration of the origin of its financing. But after months of fruitless exchanges with the prefecture, the contribution tables presented at the beginning of March were still too imprecise for the prefecture.
What if the college closed?
During the hearing on Tuesday, in the presence of dozens of students and parents, the Avicenne association, an emanation of the Union of Muslims of the Alpes-Maritimes (Umam) and manager of the college, recognized “errors” in its accounting but denounced “relentlessness”.
The association’s lawyer, Me Sefen Guez Guez, also spoke of a “disproportionate and unfair” decision, especially since the college is located in a disadvantaged area of Nice and its closure risked sending most of the students back to the neighboring public college, already saturated. The Minister of National Education Nicole Belloubet took up the subject, believing that the establishment “was not very clear about its sources of funding”.
In February, the courts had already dismissed the prefect who had imposed a three-month closure on a Muslim bookstore suspected of “fundamentalism”.