PARIS (AP) – More than three dozen French police officers raided a small private school in Paris, blocked the 92 students in their classrooms, took photos everywhere in the fridge and roasted the school director.
“It was as if they were pulling in on a drug deal,” Hanane Loukili, the director and co-founder of MHS Middle and High School, said, recalling the scene on November 17.
Loukili did not know it at the time, but a team from the Cell to Fight Radical Islam and Community Withdrawal, or CLIR, showed up for inspection. The dragnet sweeps schools, shops, clubs or mosques to eliminate ‘radicalization’. Within a week, a shocked Loukili told students that their school was going to stand still.
Loukili maintains that she is not radical, but such operations illustrate the extent of France’s efforts to fight extremism, while lawmakers are preparing to vote Tuesday on a bill aimed at eradicating it.
The MHS school had an unusual profile. It was secular and co-educational, but allowed female Muslim students to wear headscarves in class – banned in French public schools – and to pray during breaks. Unlike private Muslim schools in France, where headscarves are also allowed, MHS did not offer religious courses.
Loukili and others at the school claim it was a perfect target in what some say is an uncomfortable climate for French Muslims.
France’s cleansing of radicals and their breeding grounds is a priority for President Emmanuel Macron in a country devastated by terrorist attacks, including the beheading of a teacher outside his school in a suburb of Paris in October, followed by a deadly attack inside the basilica in Nice.
The proposed legislation is intended to re-anchor secularism in a changing France, where Muslims are increasingly visible and Islam – the country’s no. 2-religion – get stronger voice.
The legislation, which is expected to pass Tuesday’s vote in the lower house of parliament, will also expand the action.
Along with the bill, which is disputed by some Muslims, politicians and others, such strong-arm inspections could exacerbate the climate of suspicion that many Muslims feel in a country where the vast majority of Muslims do not hold extremist views.
Loukili, herself a Muslim, is well aware of the major fire hazard problems her school has faced, but in an Associated Press interview fervently has any ties to radicalism by her or school staff, which opened in 2015 , deny.
Only on December 9 did Loukili learn that her situation was more serious than she had thought. A statement from police and prosecutors said the closure was part of a growing pressure to “fight all forms of separatism” – the word Macron created for extremists undermining the country’s values.
Dragnet raids such as those unleashed against Loukili’s school have dug up soft spots at the local level to stifle Islamic radicalization. They now reach the entire country, with the police accompanied by education or other specialists, depending on the target.
In December alone, teams carried out 476 raids and closed 36 businesses, according to Interior Ministry figures. Since November 2019, 3,881 businesses have been surveyed and 126 closed, mostly small businesses but also two schools.
One was an underground school with no windows or educational programs, along with sports clubs that included preaching and obligatory prayers. Five were closed.
The proposed law and the Cell to Fight Radical Islam program, led by prefects in each region, are just part of a multiple operation to eradicate the authorities’ enemies of the Republic. Mayors of towns considered most vulnerable by the extremist threat have been asked to sign a charter agreeing to work together in the search for radicals, the AP has learned.
The cell to fight radical Islam would also get a boost from the planned law, which would provide new legal instruments to close facilities.
“Today we are obliged to use administrative motives to close down institutions that do not respect the law,” said an official close to Marlene Schiappa, Minister of Citizenship, who oversees the Cell for Fight Radical Islam program and also sponsor for the proposed law, along with Home Secretary Gerald Darmanin.
The official, who is not authorized to speak in public, could not address the matter of the MHS school. Police also declined to comment.
The school’s problems began more than a year ago with safety issues mainly related to the large building. Loukili, its director and a maths teacher, was ordered to close the school, stop teaching and run no future educational institution. She returns to court March 17.
“I think they (accuse) us of separatism because they had to set an example,” Loukili said.
“I was scared … we did not understand,” said Omar, a 17-year-old MHS student who was in class when police arrived. “They took pictures” and some officers insulted the teens, he said.
Omar was one of those who took part in a protest in Paris on Sunday against the draft law.
A mother who had to scramble to find new schools for her children after school closed says her son is OK, but her 15-year-old daughter, who wears a headscarf, had to switch to a Muslim school where head coverings are allowed, but where boys and girls are separated inside classrooms and during lunch.
Her daughter, unfortunately in the harsh climate, ‘comes home with her stomach in knots’, said the woman, who asked to be identified only by her first name, Rafika, to protect her daughter.
Jean-Riad Kechaou, a working-class history teacher in the Paris suburb of Chelles, sees anger among his Muslim adolescent students.
“It comes from this permanent stigma of their religion,” he said. “In the head of a teenager of 12, 13, 14, 15 years, everything gets messy and what comes out is that his religion is completely dirty and that the fingers are pointed at him.”
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Masha Macpherson in Paris contributed to this report.