Grandeur and decadence. In March 2013, the Averroès private high school was in the spotlight: the Lille establishment had just obtained 100% of success in the baccalaureate. Located in the working-class district of Lille Sud, the first Muslim high school in France to be contracted (in 2008) was presented as a reference. A little more than ten years later, the prefect of the North has just ended the contract linking this Lille high school to the State. The subsidies must therefore stop from the start of the 2024 school year.
A new blow for the main Muslim high school in France, twenty years after its creation with the support of the former UOIF (now Muslims of France), in the wake of the ban on the veil in school places.
“Nest of hypocritical vipers”
The end of the subsidies follows the favorable opinion of an advisory commission chaired by the prefect, which examined, at the end of November, both the financing and the content of the Muslim ethics course. In 2015, a former philosophy professor at Averroès had already sounded the alarm on teaching methods. In a column entitled “Why I resigned from Averroès high school” and published in the newspaper Releasehe accused the high school officials of playing a “double game”, by showing, on the one hand, “a white paw in the media” and, on the other, by spreading “in a sneaky and pernicious way a conception of Islam which is none other than Islamism.”
Prosecuted for this position, the teacher was acquitted in February 2017 by the Nanterre criminal court. He was also the subject of legal proceedings for “defamation and non-public insult”, after having sent an email to his former colleagues, calling the management of Averroes a “nest of hypocritical vipers”. One of the colleagues forwarded the message to management who had filed the complaint shortly after.
“It is the victory of clarity over dissimulation”
Before the court, the teacher had notably affirmed that he could no longer “go and work in an establishment which did not apply the spirit of tolerance of the Muslim philosopher Averroes”, in the midst of the post-attack in Charlie Hebdo.
Convicted at first instance, then on appeal, the teacher ended up being acquitted, formally, by the Court of Cassation in 2018. In his fight, he was supported by Mohamed Louizi, essayist and former member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Today, the latter is delighted on X (formerly Twitter) about the prefecture’s decision. “It is the victory of clarity over dissimulation,” he writes.
At the time of this teacher’s denunciations, the rectorate had commissioned an inspection mission which had estimated that “the terms of the establishment’s contract with the State [étaient] generally respected”, but that it was necessary “to clarify the status and place of the religious in the establishment”.
Several National Education inspections
The rectorate had notably asked to “remove the ambiguities between the teaching of philosophy and the optional course in religious ethics”. Since then, National Education has carried out several other inspections, without finding grounds to call into question the association contract.
In a 2020 report, the General Inspectorate of National Education notably considered that “nothing” allowed us to believe “that teaching practices (…) do not [respectaient] not the values of the Republic.” The prefecture ruled otherwise. High school officials announced at the end of November that they would take legal action if the contract was terminated.