Samuel Paty is hostile to colleagues

AOn October 16, when he gave a brief address in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine after the beheading of teacher Samuel Paty, President Emmanuel Macron expressly thanked the faculty and the school administration, who “withstood any pressure with remarkable courage”. But the story of a teaching staff heroically defending freedom of the press and freedom of expression, who stood united behind the history teacher Samuel Paty, evaporated in the course of the investigation.

It is now clear that Paty had to fight off hostility from several colleagues. Another teacher told him that he had shown the cartoon of Mohammed from the satirical weekly newspaper “Charlie Hebdo” to the students in class. Another teacher accused him of “playing into the hands of the Islamists” and “discriminating against students”. Even the headmistress did not appear as a clear attorney, but rather reprimanded Paty for his “clumsiness”. This is shown by the email exchange between Samuel Paty, the school management and the teaching staff in the ten days between the lesson on freedom of the press on October 6th and the beheading of the history teacher on October 16th.

Headmistress spoke of “awkwardness”

The newspaper “Le Monde” has now been given access to the e-mails managed by the Ministry of Education through an internal e-mail made available for each school district. Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer has repeatedly spoken out vehemently against the left-wing political tendency, which is widespread among the teaching staff, to view Muslims as victims of discrimination and social disadvantage and therefore to demand consideration. In France there is the term “Islamo-gauchisme”, which Blanquer recently declared war on in a radio conversation.

The email exchange in the teaching staff begins on October 8th, two days after Paty took the press freedom lesson with his 8th grade students. “An individual threatened us with letting Muslims come to the school and alerting the press,” the headmistress wrote to Paty. “Madame, I may be missing details,” Paty replied. “If I understand correctly, a person threatens to bring Muslims to school so that their children (who are presumably also Muslims) have to look at the cartoons of the Prophet (while forcing me to say what or not to say what) really does not correspond to secularity). (…) This situation is so absurd that it is almost comical, ”wrote the teacher.

Since “Charlie Hebdo” reprinted the Mohammed caricatures at the beginning of the trial for the attacks in 2015, he took a drawing from the satirical newspaper into the classroom. He offered the students to close their eyes or leave the classroom if they feared they would be shocked by the cartoon. At no point did he mention that he was only addressing Muslim students, as he was subsequently wrongly assumed to be.

An educational assistant had previously agreed to supervise the students who wanted to leave the room during this time. This alleged “segregation” between Muslim and non-Muslim students was held up against him by the father of a student who recorded a video and spread it on social networks.

The headmistress also rated the procedure as “awkward”. On October 9th, the headmistress announced in a circular mail to the entire college: “Monsieur Paty immediately admitted his clumsiness. (…) We are aware that he did not want to discriminate against anyone. “She concluded with the remark:” Monsieur Paty has had a difficult week and it is important that we all support him. “