The French government is taking a high school student to court after she falsely said her old principal hurt her after he told her to take off her headscarf at school. The prime minister of the country talked about this on Wednesday.
The French Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, said the government will always support the officials who are facing challenges with religious influence in schools.
He said those things in an interview on French TV channel TF1.
Secularism in France has been a big issue, especially with the Muslim population, which is the largest in Europe. Last year, France said Muslim women can’t wear long robes called abayas, even though people said this is not fair.
The teacher at Maurice Ravel Lycée school in Paris asked a young woman to take off her headscarf because it’s against French law to wear religious symbols in state institutions.
The student said no and tried to scare the school principal by saying he physically hurt her while taking off her headscarf, according to Attal.
She said the teacher grabbed her shoulder, as reported by CNN affiliate BFMTV.
The student was over 18 years old when the incident happened on February 28, according to BFMTV.
Attal said her accusations were posted on social media, which caused people to threaten the school principal with death.
The education ministry said on Tuesday that they have arrested two people who they believe are responsible for making death threats.
The principal was supposed to retire in June. But because of the incident and security advice, the principal retired early. The student involved also left the school.
Paris prosecutors didn’t think the young woman’s complaint was true, so they didn’t take her to court. The government then decided to sue the girl for lying about the principal.
“We can’t ignore anything, and I will always pay attention to this question,” he said.
Two well-known murders of teachers have made people more scared about the threat of Islamist extremism in schools.
Last year, a teacher was killed and some other people were hurt in a knife attack in Arras, northern France. The person who did it was heard saying “Allahu Akbar. ” In 2020, Samuel Paty was killed by having his head cut off after showing some cartoons from Charlie Hebdo to his students in a class.
The country has made some rules about what Muslim people can wear, and it has made some people mad.
The French President Emmanuel Macron said before that “religious symbols shouldn’t be in French schools” under the country’s rule of “secularism. ” This means that religion should be separate from the government and public affairs.
France is taking action, not just in schools. In 2022, politicians supported a rule that says people can’t wear hijabs or other noticeable religious symbols during sports competitions. The right-wing Les Républicains party suggested a change to the rules because they think wearing a hijab during sports could be dangerous for the athletes.