Islamist murder near Paris – Died teaching freedom

Samuel Paty was a history teacher and wanted to teach his students what freedom of expression meant. At the beginning of October he showed his eighth graders at the “Collège du Bois d’Aulne” cartoons by Mohammed. Political drawings with potential for impact, especially for Muslims, but not only for Muslims. Drawings that have served Islamists for years as a pretext to kill people in France and elsewhere.

Paty, 47, wanted to teach her students that something like this should be endured because freedom of expression, including freedom from religious blasphemy, is a fundamental value of French democracy. Since the attack on the editors of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, the French Ministry of Education has urged teachers to address these values ​​in their lessons.

Late on Friday afternoon, the fall break had just started, Paty was murdered, it seems she was doing exactly this job. A man armed with a kitchen knife cut the father’s throat on the open road, very close to the Bois-d’Aulne-Gymnasium de Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a suburb about 30 kilometers northwest of Paris.

“One of our fellow citizens was killed because he campaigned for freedom of expression among schoolchildren,” President Emmanuel Macron said when he visited the crime scene on Friday night. The head of state seems uncomfortable and is quick to compromise: the teacher has been “clearly the victim of an Islamist terrorist attack.”

Symbolically and emotionally charged act

The attacker, an 18-year-old who, according to investigators, was of Chechen origin, is already dead at this point, shot dead by a police force. He lived with his parents in the town of Evreux in Normandy. That’s about 100 kilometers from the crime scene.

The attack once again shakes France. Some questions about the stability of the base, on which all citizens must lean, are particularly worrying the country: Was it the ideal terrain for a fanatical assassin by people who do not fully accept the values ​​of the republic when these values ​​supposedly are they in conflict? did Islam advise?

Specifically: What role has the protest that the parents of Muslim students had brought to the school administration and put on the Internet in the days after Paty’s controversial cartoon lessons? Was the perpetrator, apparently not a high school student, incited to revenge?

“They will not divide us.”

Emmanuel macron

The Conflans-Sainte-Honorine murder is one of the most symbolically and emotionally charged acts in the long series of murders France has experienced over the years. The attack hits the country in the heart. The fatal attack on a teacher is like an assassination attempt against the school itself, the founding of the republic, which in the French understanding of the state ensures the democratic integration of people of all origins and religions. “You shall not pass,” Macron says, and it sounds like a charm. “They will not divide us.”

The mood in the country is already depressed by the corona pandemic, as this weekend the rights to freedom have been restricted by a night curfew in the big cities. It now appears that Islamist terror, which has cost 259 lives in France since 2015, is also making a return. Conflans’ cruel act reminds French people that the threat of terrorism from within, which Corona pushed aside, remains high.

Let people keep killing, or at least trying to, in the name of Islam. Also people who previously had not been noticed by the police as radicalized and those who do not need any guidance from foreign terrorist organizations such as the so-called Islamic State or Al Qaeda to act.

Just three weeks ago, a Pakistani had two in front of the old Charlie Hebdo newsroom. People seriously injured with an ax.. In his interrogations, he declared that he wanted to protest against the reissue of the Muhammad cartoons. The satirical sheet had the drawings at the beginning of the Charlie Hebdo Trialcurrently running, reprinted.

The video of anger on the Internet

It is not uncommon for Islamism and social media to interact in the worst possible way in attacks. Possibly also in the alleged assassination attempt at Conflans-Saint-Honorine.

In his class, Samuel Paty is said to have shown a Charlie Hebdo cartoon depicting Mohammed naked. The prophet crouches on the ground in prayer, his buttocks stretched out and covered with a star. Above it reads: “Muhammad: A star has come out.”

Rodrigo Arenas from the FCPE school parents’ organization reports that a few days ago “a very indignant father” complained about this process. Several parents are also said to have complained to the school management, even demanding the dismissal of the educator and pressing charges against him.

And: the father of a 13-year-old schoolgirl posted a video complaining about the cartoon lessons. He called Paty a “scammer” and asked to distribute this video.

It is not yet clear if the killer was aware of the video. He was born in Moscow in 2002 and the French authorities had not yet noticed him as a radicalized Muslim. Just like a minor offender. Like some Islamist terrorists in France before him. According to witnesses in Conflans, he shouted “Allah Akbar” on Friday. A task force shot him down with ten shots when police officers tried to catch him. The man refused to put down his knife and wanted to attack officials, French media report, citing investigators.

Shortly after the attack, a horrifying message appeared on the short message service Twitter. It showed Paty’s severed head. This is the revenge of “those who dared to humiliate Mohammed,” said the message, in which President Macron was also called the “leader of the infidels.” The Twitter account was quickly blocked. It is not yet clear if Paty’s killer was the author of this post.

The Paris counter-terrorism prosecutor immediately took up the investigation. In search of possible accomplices or accomplices, the police detained nine people until Saturday morning. Among them are the parents and grandparents of the perpetrator. The student’s father, who posted his anger video online, is also being questioned.

Teaching becomes a test of courage

France is deeply insecure, especially its teachers, it would be too understandable. The murder of his colleague Paty looks like mass intimidation, according to French educational associations. He asks who should now take the test of courage to teach the principles of freedom of the republic. For years, teachers in France have been faced time and again with parents who forbid their children to participate in physical education or biology classes on religious grounds.

This is what Macron calls “Islamist separatism.” Just a few days ago, the president delivered a keynote address on how he intends to counter these secessionist tendencies in his own country. After the bloody act of Conflans, he and his ministers now constantly assure the teachers of the solidarity that the whole country has for them.

Liberal imams condemn the attack and declare that the Muhammad cartoons are, of course, compatible with Islam. Of course, the political struggle to interpret the attack has started a long time ago: Marine Le Pen, leader of the right-wing extremist Rassemblement National party, calls for Islamism to be “expelled from our country by force”, as if it were not a product home of the French society itself.

Macron wants Samuel Paty to be honored as a hero at a state ceremony next week. “The obscurantism and violence will not win,” says the head of state. He is in the middle of the fight against separatism (read more in Interview with jihadism expert Hugo Micheron).

Posted today at 4:23 pm