Less than a week after the terrorist attack on police headquarters in Paris, French Minister of National Education Jean-Michel Blanquer announced that a dozen public school teachers have been reported for Islamic radicalization in 2018.
“These are cases that can be of varying intensity. These are things that give rise to an initial vigilance on our part,” Blanquer said on Thursday during an interview with French radio Europe 1.
“There are values to be respected at school, and when we do not respect these values, when we have anti-republican speeches, we do not have a place for those adults supervising children,” the Education Minister added.
Blanquer cited a case in Torcy, in the the Paris suburb of Seine-et-Marne, where a teacher and imam who runs a private mosque had made “anti-republican remarks”. The teacher was subsequently dismissed from his teaching position.
A history and geography professor working at a college in the same notorious no-go zone (Seine-Saint-Denis) has spoken out about some of his colleagues who he believes to have been radicalized.
“The teaching staff is not immune [to radicalization],” the professor said, adding that one of his Muslim colleagues refuses to shake hands with women.
The radicalization of students is much more prevalent, with at least a thousand cases of student radicalization has been documented.
Authorities in France are perhaps more concerned than ever that radical Islam is seeping into every public employment sector in the country. Last week, an employee with security clearance working at Paris’s police HQ stabbed four of his colleagues to death. It was later discovered that he was a recent Islamic convert with links to radical Islamic terrorist organizations.
Despite growing radicalization among the police force, many officers say they’re reluctant to report potentially radicalized colleagues due to fear of being labeled ‘Islamophobic’.
