France: Muslim students cheer burning of French flags in response to Muhammad cartoons
What will France be like when these students grow up? The answer is not difficult or elusive in the slightest degree. But no one wants to face it.
The assassination of Professor Samuel Paty upsets the faculty. After the feeling of revulsion, there is this fear of rubbing shoulders with forbidden subjects: religion, cartoons and freedom of expression.
Gaël J. apologizes, he “shouldn’t”. He shouldn’t use this martial vocabulary. Obviously, a teacher shouldn’t say that, especially not at the start of a career. A professor of history and geography at a college at the Amiens Academy (Somme), this 30-year-old who is retraining apologizes. One, two, three times. Then he blurted out these offensive words: “The death of 47-year-old colleague Samuel Paty is a loss on the front lines, at the front. Suddenly, we understand that we are doing a dangerous job. The day before yesterday, I didn’t think about it, and today it jumps out at me: we are potential targets.”
Deep down, he knew it without really formulating it. Simply, this drama brings him abruptly back to his mission, to his daily life, and to these sometimes tricky paths, often polluted by excesses. The most mined land? The hours of moral and civic education for which history and geography teachers are responsible, the very ones which earned Samuel Paty a death sentence.
A student: “If we go beyond the limits, there will be attacks”
Among the themes to be addressed by teachers with fourth-year classes: freedom of expression. He says: “Naively, last year, for my very first class on this subject, I decided to put my foot in the dish and broach the subject of the Muhammad cartoons. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite turn out the way I imagined.” He had hoped to see the students debate, discuss, exchange, be open to other opinions, “think of freedoms in the plural”. Then he fell from a great height. “Whatever the profile of the students, there was an immediate consensus to say that we cannot touch religions. It hit me. From there, we tell ourselves that there is work to do…”
The teacher then decides to form different small groups which, at the end of this four-hour session, will have to offer an oral presentation on a subject of their choice. One of them chooses the attacks of 2015. “They went there because it marked them, they were very young teenagers at the time of the events. ”
When they come to the board, the teacher does not know the content of the presentation. He simply knows that the discussions were rich and the work rather studious. A student speaks, around the room the silence is complete: “For several years, freedom of expression has been threatened because some journalists lack respect for religions and do not take into account the laws… If we go beyond the limits, there will be attacks.” In the room, everyone nods. In the middle of the room, the professor is annoyed. “We had just completed a large reminder of what the law allowed,” he swears. For them, the law is something abstract. “Their views are not based on texts, but on their personal distinction between good and evil.”
“Faced with a video of French flags being burnt in Pakistan, most of the students applauded.”
Jordi Sutra, teacher of the same subject in a college in Val-de-Marne which he describes as “sensitive”, also gives a particularly terrifying account of these courses where some students go so far as to “defend terrorists”, sometimes even starting in the sixth grade. Since beginning the job, he has used Muhammad cartoons as a medium to illustrate the issue of press freedom. “Over the years, I’ve seen the situation deteriorate,” he says, to the point that he heard students promise him possible “problems” to come if he persisted in brandishing certain drawings. “There are sometimes stimulating debates, but the deconstruction of representations is increasingly difficult to carry out.”
Jean-Baptiste Jorda also makes this observation. A French teacher in a vocational high school in the Seine-Saint-Denis department, he is required to build sequences around information. He is free to choose the object of study of his choice. This year, he offered his second year students to look at satirical newspapers and their editorial freedom. To prevent the sessions from getting out of hand, the teacher chose not to show the cartoons, but rather to describe them in words. Including the famous one from Charlie Hebdo showing Muhammad in tears, annoyed at being “loved by idiots”. “They exploded,” he recalls. “They immediately insulted the newspaper; some even explained that they wanted blasphemy to be prohibited by law … And when I tried to argue with them, they tried to make me say certain things to trick me. I was no longer in control of anything.” To bring them to their senses and start another discussion, Professor Jorda showed a video of French flags being burned in Pakistan in September 2020 in reaction to the republication of the cartoons by the weekly, to show them “where intolerance can lead”. “I thought I would make them think, but most of the students stood up and clapped.” Stupor.
“To them Charlie is the far right”
After this session, the professor wondered for a long time about the usefulness of his approach without really finding any answers. Talking about freedom of expression to confident and sometimes threatening students, is it “a waste of time” in addition to presenting a “danger” to yourself? “After what happened in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, I didn’t sleep all night,” he explains. “It aroused some concerns.”
Either way, he still can’t explain this closed dialogue. It just identifies a few symptoms. “Their big argument is the alleged double standard they present when comparing incomparable things,” he explains. For example, they do not understand that the criticism of the prophet of Muslims can be authorized when doubting the Holocaust is not… For many, Charlie is the symbol of what they see as a persecution of Muslims and that they call it “Islamophobia”. He explains: “They have a very confused political vision. To them Charlie is the far right. So, to fight against them, all means are legitimate. Insults are like violence. To disagree with them on this issue is to side with the ‘racists'”….