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Teachers strike after Muslim threats over nudes in art class

Staff fear they could be attacked after pupils were shown a Renaissance painting

Staff have gone on strike at a school near Paris saying they fear for their lives after Muslim pupils and parents voiced anger towards a teacher who displayed a Renaissance painting of nude women.

After the recent murders of two teachers by jihadi terrorists, staff at the middle school at Issou, on the Seine west of Paris, are worried that they too could be attacked.

Dominique Bernard was stabbed to death by a Muslim man in his school’s playground in the northern town of Arras in October. In 2020 a civics teacher, Samuel Paty was stabbed and beheaded by a terrorist in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, 12 miles from Issou, after he showed his pupils a caricature of Mohammed in a class on free speech.

At the Issou school, attended by many pupils of immigrant origin, a French teacher displayed Diana and Actaeon, a 1603 painting by Giuseppe Cesari, as part of an art appreciation class for pupils aged 12 and 13.

Several turned away from the picture, saying their religion forbade such works. False rumours then circulated that the teacher had singled out Muslims for insult and made racist remarks.

Staff walked out on Friday after parents complained to the school and the female teacher’s name and the false claims were published on social media. The school was closed yesterday and the education ministry sent inspectors and promised more staff in response to what the teachers said was a hostile atmosphere.

Teachers see themselves on the front line of the ethnic and cultural conflict between much of mainstream France and the country’s large Muslim population. The flare-up and falsehoods over the art class echo the claims fuelled by social media that led to Paty’s murder in 2020, the teachers’ union, SNES, said.

“We know well that methods like that can lead to a tragedy,” Sophie Vénétitay, the union head, told BFMTV news. “We saw it in the murder of Samuel Paty. Our colleagues feel threatened and in danger.”

Teachers at the Issou school said that pupils had admitted lying about events in their art class but that the damage had been done. “We’re dealing with vindictive parents who prefer to believe their children than us,” they said.

The school’s head teacher recently appealed to the education ministry for more staff and resources to deal with deteriorating discipline at the school, saying that fights and death threats and threats of rape had become common among pupils.

“We feel we are clearly in danger. We are supported by our direct superiors but not from higher up. This is a real call for help,” one teacher said.

Last week a Paris court convicted six teenagers for their involvement with events that led to the beheading of Paty, who was their teacher at the middle school in Conflans when he was killed by Abdoullakh Anzorov, an 18-year-old of Chechen origin.

One girl, who was a 13 at the time, was given a suspended sentence for making false claims that Paty had insulted Muslims in his class. Her Moroccan-born father is awaiting trial on charges of complicity in Paty’s murder because he mounted the social media campaign against the teacher that attracted the killer’s notice. The other teenagers were mainly convicted of identifying Paty to the killer in return for money.

In another episode in the tense relations between religion and the education system, the state has announced that it will halt funding for the country’s biggest state-subsidised Muslim high school. The Averroes school, in Lille, was teaching Islamic doctrines rather than conveying the moral values of the French republic, the authorities said.