A prominent French Muslim intellectual slams an elite Muslim highschool in Lille.
The Averroes Islamic Highschool in Lille, Northern France, is sueing Soufiane Zitouni, 47, a former philosophy teacher, for « private libel ». Zitouni, who had been with the Averroes Highschool for five months, resigned in the wake of the jihadist massacres last month at Charlie Hebdo, a satirical weekly, and at HyperCasher, a kosher supermaket in Paris.
In an op-ed published on February 5 in Liberation, a leftwing daily, he described the highschool as a hotbed of radical fundamentalism and antisemitism. Moreover, he charged the school’s management of playing a double game : « On the one hand they posture as moderate and law abiding Muslims in order to assuage the public opinion and enjoy government financial support ; on the other hand, they are engaging into sneaky indoctrination in political islam. »
Under French law, private schools, including religious schools, may be granted extensive government support upon entering into a partnership with the Ministry of Education, as long as they stick to a global curriculum and hire government certified teachers. As of 2014, two elite Muslim schools only have opted for such a partnership – the Averroes Highschool in Lille and the Al-Kindi Highschool in Lyons -, against 9000 Catholic schools and 130 Jewish schools.
According to the French League for Islamic Education (Life), many of the 50 non-partnership Muslim highschools currently in operation may join the partnership program once a mandatory five years probatory period is over. For lack of specifically Islamic offer in highschool education, many observant Muslim families send their children to Catholic schools rather than to the State-sponsored schools, who are deemed to be too secular.
According to Zitouni, the highschool’s library does not provide even one single book by or about Averroes (or Ibn Rushd, 1126-1198), the comparatively liberal Spanish Muslim philosopher after which it is named. Whereas it features books by Tariq Ramadan, a Swish, francophone, contemporary thinker seen as a sophistocate exposer of the Muslim Brotherhood’s views. Zitouni says most teachers and pupils tend to support and express radical views on religious or political matters, or to take anti-Jewish prejudice for granted. « I sensed things were getting out of control when the schools managers turned a blind eye to two pupils publicly who supported in class the Kouachi brothers (the Charlie Hebdo killers). »
According to Mohamed Louizi, a Lille-based Muslim blogger hosted by the leftwing website Mediapart, the highschool management is close to the Union of French Islamic Organizations (UOIF) and its offshoot the Northern Islamic League (LIN). Both organizations are reported to be fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood’s international branch.
Zitouni’s defection is all the more resented by the Averroes Highschool that he is seen as one of the most promising French born Muslim intellectuals. A follower to some extent of the Alawiya sufi order and of its chief French leader Cheikh Khaled Bentounes, he is both observant and well read in Islamic theology and law. On several occasions, he contributed on religious matters to oumma.org, a flagship Islamic website.
On January 15, he quoted in a first op-ed for Libération a hadith (authoritative tradition) according to which Muhammad is supposed « to testify against his own congregation in the future » and wondered whether that future was not now.
© Michel Gurfinkiel, 2015