A French teenager is to be sued by the state for falsely accusing her headteacher of striking her in a heated exchange over her wearing an Islamic head-covering, according to the BBC.
The Paris headteacher resigned when death threats began circulating on social media after he had insisted that the pupil remove her head-covering inside the school, in accordance with French law.
The incident arose on 28 February when the head told three female pupils that they should obey the law by removing their head coverings. Two complied, but the third did not and there was an altercation.
In the days that followed, the head was the object of death threats on social media.
The unnamed teacher announced his decision to resign in an email sent on Friday to colleagues at the Maurice Ravel Lycée in the 20th district of Paris.
‘I have finally taken the decision to quit my functions,” he explained, “out of concern for my own safety and that of the establishment. I leave after seven years, rich and intense, spent at your side, and after 45 years in public education.’ He thanked colleagues for the support they had shown him over the past three weeks.
Police found no evidence that the headteacher had struck the girl, prompting Prime Minister Gabriel Attal to say the accuser would be taken to court for making false allegations.
Attal was quoted as saying: ‘The state… will always stand with these officials, those who are on the frontline faced with these breaches of secularism, these attempts of Islamist entryism in our education establishments.’
The BBC reports that politicians from both left and right expressed outrage that the career of a respected teacher should be ended by a hate campaign on the Internet.
The Islamist threat to French schools is taken extremely seriously since the murder of two teachers.
Samuel Paty was decapitated on the street in a Paris suburb in 2020 and Dominique Bernard was killed at his school in Arras five months ago.
[Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/39957829@N02/3673563250]