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A teacher was murdered on the street in a Paris suburb. He had shown Muhammad cartoons from the satirical newspaper “Charlie Hebdo” in the Unterreich.
He wanted to teach his students the basics of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. But history teacher Samuel P.’s attempt at Bois d’Aulne Secondary School in Conflans-Saint-Honorine, a suburb in the north-west of Paris, ended in his death. The head of state of France, Emmanuel Macron, spoke of an “Islamist terrorist attack”. In a brief speech at the school, he assured: “No passaràn!”, You will not pass. Religious fanatics should not divide the nation. France will join in the “enlightenment” and the violence that accompanies it.
The brutal act on Friday delves into those wounds that have not wanted to heal in the Parisian population since the attack on the satirical magazine “Charlie Hebdo” in 2015. Another murder is linked to a controversy over freedom of expression. While many take to the streets this time also to express their solidarity with the victim and defend the ideals of the enlightenment, radical Islamism is driving an ever-deepening gap in the population.
The alleged perpetrator, an 18-year-old man, was found by the police shortly after the murder thanks to tips from neighbors. Because he threatened and assaulted the officers with a bloody kitchen knife, they knocked him down several times. He was dead on the spot. Before being arrested, he still had time to brag about his terrible bloodshed on Twitter and post a ghoulish photo showing that he had beheaded his victim in the manner of an Islamist execution. Based on this initial situation, the authorities assumed a terrorist crime from the beginning and the investigation was commissioned on site to the anti-terrorist brigade.
The victim is a 47-year-old history teacher who has taught at this high school for several years. He recently addressed the issue of freedom of the press and freedom of expression in two classes following the curriculum. Among other things, he showed his students a cartoon of Muhammad. Since he was apparently aware that this might surprise some of the young devotees in their religious sentiments, he gave the Muslims among them the option of briefly leaving the classroom. However, some Muslim students and even more so their parents were outraged by this “provocation” in the style of the satirical newspaper “Charlie Hebdo”. They protested to the school management and allegedly demanded not only an apology, but even the transfer of P., who in turn hoped to settle the matter with an argument.
Heated mood
The controversy fueled by rumors against the teacher for “blasphemy in school” quickly spread throughout the neighborhood. Since he received threats for this, Samuel P. recently even filed a lawsuit.
The alleged murderer is a Chechen born in Moscow in 2002. The police discovered that he was not a student nor was he in contact with the teacher. A total of nine people were arrested Saturday night. Among them are relatives and friends of the murderer, as well as parents of schoolchildren. With their interrogation, the police want to know more about the person of the alleged murderer and his motives, but also to check if there was complicity or if someone incited the young man to commit his act. In any case, the police only knew the 18-year-old for minor offenses, not for Islamist radicalization. During the confrontation with the security officers, he is said to have shouted “Allahu akbar”.
It is shocking to many French that once again the controversial cartoons of Muhammad, which originally appeared in a Danish newspaper, are the focus of a bloody act. In January 2015, two terrorists related to Al Qaeda broke into the “Charlie Hebdo” newsroom, killing eleven people there and shooting another policeman while trying to escape. On September 25 of this year, on the occasion of the trial of his alleged accomplices, a young Pakistani seriously wounded two employees of a production company with a butcher knife in front of the former offices of the newspaper on Rue Nicolas Appert, in the 11th district. from Paris. Little did he know that “Charlie Hebdo” had moved a long time ago.
Religious intolerance
Many teachers who are increasingly facing religious intolerance in their professional work on other social issues (e.g. sexuality, gender equality, abortion) were particularly affected by this new attack on freedom of expression in France.
The Minister of Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer, gave them courage in a first reaction: “The republic is facing this vile murder of a teacher. Our unwavering unity is the only answer to the monstrous Islamist terror. “
