of students leave a music class for religious reasons
The scene happened in the middle of the month of Ramadan. A handful of students from a college in downtown Toulouse left a music lesson while their teacher was playing a Beatles song during the Ramadan period. They were called to order by the principal who made a report to the rectorate, confirms the rectorate of the Toulouse academy.
The rectorate seized by the establishment
The events took place at Les Chalets middle school in a residential area of downtown Toulouse, generally spared from major discipline problems. According to information from our colleagues at The Noon Dispatch, the incident occurred on April 4, three days after the start of Ramadan. This is the holy month of fasting for Muslims.
The music education teacher launches a beatles song in order to study the structure of the piece. A student gets up and refuses to follow the course any longer, claiming that during Ramadan, he is not allowed to listen to music. He leaves the room followed by seven other college students, “who are not all of the Muslim faith and who followed their comrade by group effect and not by religious conviction”, specifies Mostafa Fourar, the rector of theToulouse Academy.
The headteacher and class homeroom teacher visit the class for a debriefing.
The principal had the right attitude. She made a reminder of the law and the values of the republic. Since then, I have not been informed of any such occurrences. There have been no others all year,” reports the rector.
Towards a radicalization of students?
According to the rectorate’s statistics, behavioral problems related to questioning of secularism, direct or indirect, by the pupils remain marginal. They represent only 3.2% of the reports issued by the heads of establishments (attacks on persons and property, etc.). Mostafa Fourar closely monitors these attempts to undermine the republican principle of secularism :
Even if for several years, the trend has been stabilizing, nothing is allowed to pass. Here, there is a particular sensitivity to these issues, I am referring to the attacks committed in Toulouse and Montauban in 2012. If the facts are serious, the case is directly handled by the Ministry of National Education and may give rise to giving to a judicial inquiry.”
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