French teacher who warned of radical Islam is under police protection
Teacher who warned of the threat of radical Islam is placed under police protection in France after receiving death threats
- Philosophy teacher Didier Lemaire said he received death threats after he wrote an open letter saying the state did not do enough to protect teacher Samuel Paty
- Mr Paty was beheaded in October after using cartoons of Mohammed in a lesson
- Mr Lemaire wrote he has witnessed the ‘sectarianism that is taking an increased hold on people’s bodies and minds’
A French teacher who warned of the spread of radical Islam in the country has been placed under police protection after he allegedly received death threats.
Didier Lemaire said the threats began after he wrote an open letter saying the state did not do enough to protect Samuel Paty, the French teacher beheaded in a jihadist attack last October.
French prosecutors today said they were investigating the alleged threats against the philosophy teacher.
Mr Lemaire teaches at a high school in Trappes, a low-income Paris suburb with a large Muslim population that has become emblematic of the government’s efforts to curb radicalism.
Didier Lemaire said the death threats began after he wrote an open letter saying the state did not do enough to protect Samuel Paty, the French teacher beheaded in a jihadist attack last October
Authorities say hardline Salafist conservatism has attracted a widespread following in the town, which authorities say was the home of around 50 people who left to fight alongside jihadists in Iraq and Syria in recent years.
Mr Paty, 47, was beheaded near his school in a Paris suburb by 18-year-old Abdullakh Anzorov, a Chechen, on October 16.
The teacher was killed after he showed his class caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad for a debate on freedom of expression, angering parents who targeted him in a social media campaign.
Mr Lemaire wrote a few weeks after the beheading in the news magazine Le Point: ‘I have been a witness to the sectarianism that is taking an increased hold on people’s bodies and minds’.
Mr Paty, 47, was beheaded near his school in a Paris suburb by 18-year-old Abdullakh Anzorov, a Chechen, on October 16
He said that Mr Paty ‘was not protected by an institution that underestimated the threat’. Mr Lemaire said he has since received threats.
Prosecutors from nearby Versailles said: ‘We have been alerted to the worries expressed by this teacher with regards to threats he allegedly received.’ No further detailed were added.
A police source confirmed that Mr Lemaire is now under police protection.
‘In accordance with his wishes, the school district will ensure, in cooperation with the police, conditions that will allow him to continue teaching at the school,’ the Versailles board of education said in a statement.
Mr Paty’s murder sparked a torrent of outrage that prompted President Emmanuel Macron to crack down on Islamist extremism and violence in a country reeling from a wave of jihadist attacks since 2015 that have killed more than 250 people.
Mr Paty’s murder in France has been followed by a wave of anger against Emmanuel Macron (pictured next to Paty’s coffin in Paris last month) throughout the Muslim world
Protesters burn an effigy depicting French President Emmanuel Macron during a demonstration in Kolkata, India on November 4
Macron came out strongly in support of the right to free speech – saying ‘we will not stop drawing cartoons’ – while French media and even city authorities defiantly re-published the caricatures, which are offensive to many Muslims.
The French leader was denounced as Islamophobic by detractors abroad, particularly Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and anti-France protests took place in many Muslim-majority countries from Bangladesh to Lebanon.
In response to Paty’s death, Macron’s government shut a number of organisations deemed Islamist and drafted law legislation initially called ‘the anti-separatism bill’ which cracks down on foreign funding for Islamic organisations.
Since the attack, there have been a number of cases whereby teachers have been receiving threats – even from their pupils.
In November last year, a French high school pupil was arrested for threatening to behead his teacher ‘like Samuel Paty’.
The male pupil sent a message in a private Snapchat group asking other pupils to ‘threaten with death’ one of their school teachers.
Weeks earlier, police in France questioned four 10-year-olds who voiced support for the beheading of Samuel Paty and who said they would kill their own teacher if he lampooned Islam’s prophet.
‘They justified the teacher’s assassination by arguing that it was forbidden to offend the prophet and adding that they would kill their teacher if he caricatured the prophet,’ Interior Ministry spokeswoman Camille Chaize said.
Again in November last year, a 14-year-old French pupil was arrested after he threatened his teacher as she showed photos of a demonstration sparked by the attack on Charli Hebdo.
The teenager, from Savigny-le-Temple, allegedly told his teacher in class: ‘I’ll cut you up like Samuel Paty’.
Source: Read Full Article