A headteacher in Paris has been forced to quit after death threats were made against him after he told a teenage pupil to remove her Islamic head-covering in line with French law.
According to Mail Online, the teacher asked three female pupils at the Maurice Ravel Lycée to remove their headscarves, a request two complied with while one refused, prompting an altercation.
Threats appeared online in the following days, with a police patrol launched at the school.
An investigation into cyber-harrassment was opened, and a 26-year-old man has since been arrested for making death threats against the principal online. He is due to stand trial in April.
The teacher, who had worked at the school for seven years and in education for more than four decades, announced on Friday that he felt he had to quit over concerns for his own safety ‘and that of the establishment.’
One Maurice Ravel Lycée teacher, who did not wish to be named, told French media: ‘We are shocked, we are shocked. We find it lamentable… But hey, if we can’t protect him otherwise.’
Threats began to emerge following the incident on February 28, when the student refused to remove her Islamic headscarves on school premises and an altercation ensued, according to prosecutors.
The student went on to lodge a complaint against the principal, accusing him of mistreating her during the incident.
She told French daily Le Parisien that she had been ‘hit hard on the arm’ by the headmaster, but the Paris prosecutor’s office said that her complaint had been dismissed.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced today the state would be filing a complaint against the student over falsely accusing the headmaster of mistreatment during the incident.
‘The state… will always stand with these officials, those who are on the frontline faced with these breaches of secularism, these attempts of Islamist entryism in our education establishments,’ he said during the evening news on the TF1 television channel.
Education Minister Nicole Belloubet had visited the school in early March and offered the headteacher her full support, deploring the ‘unacceptable attacks’.