Excerpts from a confidential report from the Regional Chamber of Accounts highlighted the presence in the program of a course in “Muslim ethics”.
By BL with AFP
© FRANCOIS LO PRESTI / AFP
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DThese “erroneous” excerpts, unjustified “fantasies”. On Thursday, the management of the Averroès Muslim high school in Lille finally spoke about the publication, in the press, of a confidential report from the Regional Chamber of Accounts (CRC), which recently carried out an audit there. The management of the school also denounces recurring media “attacks”. In a report not yet finalized, the CRC insists on the “critical financial” situation of the school and pinpoints the presence, in the program of an optional course of “Muslim ethics”, of a work laying down rules to be followed, including the prohibition, under penalty of death, of apostasy or the pre-eminence of the divine law.
The director of the school group, Éric Dufour, noted during a press briefing that the CRC had since indicated that certain extracts disclosed in the press were “erroneous”. He regretted “recurring attacks, suspicions, fantasies propagated for years”, in “total ignorance” of the establishment, and despite “very many inspections and controls”.
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A dozen teachers, students and parents were present at his side to defend an establishment which they say they have chosen for “its excellence” and its “republican values”.
A book pinned “poorly chosen”
The director acknowledged “a lack of vigilance” about the book called into question by the CRC, an annotated edition of the “forty hadiths of Imam an-Nawawî”, which “poses a problem in terms of commentaries” and “has been badly chosen”. The book was not offered directly to students and only appeared in a bibliography for teachers, he noted. “We are a normal school group, aiming for personal, cultural, civic and spiritual development,” he swore.
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Regarding former funding from Qatar, Éric Dufour opted for irony: “At PSG, it’s not a problem. Having a loan, would that mean formatting, indoctrinating 800 students, their teachers? It’s unbelievable. He also regretted the “break in communication” with the Hauts-de-France region, which for four years has been reluctant to pay the subsidies it owes to the high school, but has been forced to do so by the courts. This situation puts “at risk the survival of the establishment, in the more or less long term”, he estimated.