Freedom of speech

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A protester waves a French flag with “freedom of speech” written on it during an anti-terrorism vigil at Place de La Republique for the slain school teacher Samuel Paty on October 18 in Paris.

Terrorism pressured

the secular culture

The murder last week of a teacher who used images of the Prophet Muhammad in lessons about freedom of expression has sparked a solidarity movement in France and reignited the debate over Islam’s role in the country.

Photo：Abdulmonam Eassa/EPA

History and geography teacher Samuel Paty, 47, brought scrutiny this month when he showed his 12 to 14-year-old students two caricatures of Muhammad published by the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

The same images that in 2015 inspired jihadists to kill 11 staff members at the magazine and six others in Paris.

Parents and teachers at the school, located just 20 miles outside the capital, said Paty gave his Muslim pupils the opportunity to leave the classroom or look away so as not to anger them.

Idolatry is forbidden in Islam, and many devout Muslims believe any depictions of Mohammed, or any revered prophet, to be taboo.

But many also found the Charlie Hebdo drawings particularly offensive not just because they depicted the prophet, but because they did so in a way that some critics said perpetuated racist, bigoted stereotypes of Muslims.

Photo：Kiran Ridley/Getty Images

France is taking the suspected terror attack very seriously. Since the Charlie Hebdo assault in 2015, the last few years have seen high-profile knife attacks, strikes against police on the Champs-Élysées, and a coordinated assault in Paris that killed 130 people and injured hundreds more.

But Friday’s killing strikes at the core of two of France’s most turbulent debates, which of late have somewhat fused together: whether there should be limits on freedom of speech, and how Muslims should integrate into French society.

And it’s a conversation that could continue to roil the nation’s politics for years to come.

Decapitated French teacher

warned before 'Islamist' attack

A student said he warned his teacher about showing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, considered blasphemous by Muslims, days before he was decapitated on a Paris street in what French President Emmanuel Macron called an "Islamist terrorist attack."

Martial Lusiela, 15, told NBC News he was "shocked" by Friday afternoon's attack in the middle-class suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, north-west of the French capital.

"I didn't expect a decapitation — it went too far," he said, speaking with the permission of his parents, shortly after the incident that left his 47-year-old history teacher dead.

French anti-terrorism prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard identified the victim as Samuel P.Ricard told reporters on Saturday that the attacker, who he identified as Abdoullakh Aboutezidovitch A, was an 18-year-old Chechen refugee.

He said he had been armed with a knife and an airsoft gun that fired plastic pellets. He was shot dead by police shortly after the incident.

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Born in Moscow, the teenager had been granted a 10-year residency in France and was not known to intelligence services, Ricard said.

A text claiming responsibility for the attack and a photograph of the victim were found on the suspect's phone, he said, adding that the suspect had been seen at the school asking students about the teacher, and the headmaster had also received several threatening phone calls.

Ricard said Samuel had sustained multiple injuries and that an investigation for murder with a suspected terrorist motive, had been opened.

On Saturday morning, floral tributes were laid outside the College Bois d'Aulne, where Samuel had taught. Others held signs saying, "I am a teacher."

CHARLES PLATIAU / Reuters

Student Luisela, said he had been in Samuel's class earlier this month, when the civics teacher had shown pupils the caricatures published by the Charlie Hebdo magazine in 2015,which are considered blasphemous by Muslims. Islam prohibits images of the prophet, asserting that they lead to idolatry.

"We said to the teacher it was not good to show photos like this and that it would cause a huge problem," Lusiela said. "It's not a caricature you should show to the class, because there are Muslims in the class."

Nine people were taken into custody for questioning as part of the investigation, including four members of the attackers family, a spokesperson for France's anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office said Saturday.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Samuel "was the victim of an Islamist terrorist attack," speaking from the scene of the incident late Friday.

Photo：Abdulmonam Eassa

"One of our fellow citizens was assassinated today because he was teaching, he was teaching pupils about freedom of expression," Macron told reporters.

"Our compatriot was flagrantly attacked," he said. "They won't win... We will act. Firmly, And quickly. You can count on my determination."

The attack came as Macron's government continues to work on a bill to address Islamic radicals. France has the largest Muslim population in Western Europe with up to 5 million members, Islam is the country's second largest religion.

Part of that population is made up of Chechens. In the 1990s, two wars in Chechnya, a predominantly Muslim Russian republic in the North Caucasus, triggered a wave of emigration and many fled to western Europe.

Muslim leaders in France have widely condemned Friday's incident, which carried echoes of the attack five years ago on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

The outlet published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, unleashing divisions that are still casting a pall over French society.

Less than a month ago, a man originally from Pakistan used a meat cleaver to attack and wound two people who were on a cigarette break outside the offices where Charlie Hebdo was based at the time of the 2015 attack.

The controversy of the cartoons was revived last month when Charlie Hebdo decided to re-publish them to coincide with the start of the trial of accomplices in the 2015 attack.

Al-Qaeda, the militant Islamist group that claimed responsibility for those killings, threatened to attack Charlie Hebdo again after it republished the cartoons.

The magazine said last month it republished the images to assert its right to freedom of expression, and to show it would not be cowed into silence by violent attacks. That stance was backed by many prominent French politicians and public figures.

France and

“Islamist separatism”

For over a year, Macron promised to detail his views on the role of Islam in France’s secular culture. On October 2, he finally delivered that address.

“What we must attack is Islamist separatism,” he told the nation, saying extremists preyed upon desperate Muslims in desolate neighborhoods, basically creating anti-French enclaves by spreading their radical Islamic “ideology” and “project.”

“We built our own separatism ourselves,” he continued, arguing French authorities made such a situation possible by huddling immigrants together in areas apart from good-paying jobs or French public schools.

To solve the problem, he offered some reforms, like within four years forbidding foreign-trained imams (Muslim religious leaders) to preach in France. Instead, all imams must be certified in the country in order to lead a congregation.

It was clear Macron, who has long called for an “Islam of France” that seamlessly integrates Muslims into the country’s society, aimed to distinguish between extremists and all Muslims. Still, his speech, and the thinking underlying it, received mixed reviews.

Some said his statements — namely, “Islam is a religion that is in crisis today, all over the world” — were incendiary, not measured.

They also accuse Macron, who is up for reelection in 18 months, of trying to garner some right-wing bona fides by taking a tougher stance against Islamic extremism.

“The repression of Muslims has been a threat, now it is a promise,” tweeted Yasser Louati, a French Muslim activist.

Photo : Twitter

Others, like the Atlantic Council think tank’s Benjamin Haddad, said the speech and Macron’s views on the issue set the right tone.

“It underlined the urgency to fight separatism,” Haddad, who has defended Macron’s policies in Washington, DC, since 2017, told me.

“It’s really more about certain neighborhoods and areas that aren’t necessarily violent ... but will progressively socialize radical ideology as French republican ideals can’t get through anymore.” It’s more than an ideological fight, he added. “We’re talking about losing territory.”

“If you go to Paris, everyone will tell you there’s a problem. It’s one of the deepest societal problems in France today,” he concluded.

But what the disagreement over Macron’s speech underscores is how France has struggled to accept Muslims as they come. For example, the country has banned headscarves in public schools and for government employees while at work.

The government says such measures are meant to help Muslims integrate with France’s secular culture, while critics say the focus on Islamic garb stems from bigotry.

This issue burst out into the open after the terrorist attack following the Charlie Hebdo cartoons.

Local debate roiled over whether outlets should refrain from producing images of Mohammad, as Islamic teaching forbids, or whether doing so is a celebration of France’s history of criticizing all religions.

After all, the magazine often lampoons religious leaders like the pope.

Thousands took to France’s streets to defend that history. On Sunday, they rallied in major cities like Paris, Lyon, and Marseille in defiance of the attack, in Paty’s memory, and to bolster the notion that freedom of expression in France has no limits — even if that leads one to show images of the Islamic prophet.

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“We are the result of our history: These values of liberty, secularism and democracy cannot remain just words,” a demonstrator in Paris told French media. “We have to keep them alive, and being here helps do that.”

Politicians who attended the rallies made similar comments. “I want teachers to know that, after this ignoble act, the whole country is behind them,” French Prime Minister Jean Castexsaid on Sunday. “This tragedy affects each and every one of us because, through this teacher, it is the republic that was attacked.”

Importantly, the number of racist attacks in France, including against Muslims, has dropped in recent years.

Such statistics offer hope that the potential scapegoating of Muslims in the coming weeks and months may not lead to a rise in hate crimes.

But Macron’s policies and the aftermath of the attack indicate that Muslims are once again under a national microscope. That, at the very least, won’t help with the assimilation problems the country aims to solve.