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| Europe |
| France’s First Muslim High School Opens |
| 2003-09-03 |
| Those bets on France becoming the first european islamic state are looking better and better. EFL/FU: Only a dozen students — six boys and six girls — showed up at the mosque where France’s first Muslim high school began holding classes on Tuesday. Jihad High The high school, located on the third floor of Lille’s Al-Imane mosque in a gritty neighborhood of the northern city, follows France’s national education program. But the curriculum also includes courses in Islamic culture and Arabic language and emphasizes creating a Muslim atmosphere, officials said. We have no doubt. The girls said they chose to attend the Averroes Lycee simply to be able to wear their traditional Muslim headscarves, forbidden in most public schools. "It’s part of my personality," said 16-year-old Samira of the violet scarf wrapped closely to her forehead. She, like all the other girls, refused to give her full name. Anyone think they had a choice in attending this school? Even the school’s principal, Sylvie Taleb, a former French teacher in a Catholic school, wore an elegant white chiffon scarf dotted with small pearls on opening day. "Perhaps you are writing a new page in the history of France without being aware," she told the students. "You are our ambassadors." "And future masters. Is there anything I can get you?" France, taking in immigrants from its former North African colonies, has the largest Muslim community in Western Europe, estimated at 5 million, and Islam is the nation’s second religion, after Roman Catholicism. There are hundreds of private Catholic schools, but the first Muslim school, a junior high school in Aubervilliers, outside Paris, was established only two years ago. The wearing of religious symbols has been charged with emotion since the 19th century, when advocates of a secular school system free from the influence of the Roman Catholic Church won a bitter fight, clinched by a 1905 law separating church and state. Now, many French fear that principle is endangered by the country’s increasingly assertive Muslim community. Not afraid enough. The high school is said to be funded only by donations, even though the mosque is owned by the Islamic League of the Nord region, a member of a weighty fundamentalist group, the Union of Islamic Organizations of France — reportedly close to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. I’m sure the money trail is very interesting. The students, paying a tuition of just over $1000 a year, have been given three classrooms and a science laboratory — and use of the cavernous prayer room downstairs. That science lab will come in handy. Mosque Rector Amar Lasfar said the new school will inculcate students with "an Islam that respects the values of the republic." The Republic of France or the Islamic Republic of Iran? |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #5 What do the futures predict on when the new French civil war will start. |
| Posted by: raptor 2003-9-4 8:56:36 AM |
| #4 Bet they'll have some pretty frightening science fair projects. |
| Posted by: Baba Yaga 2003-9-3 9:09:48 PM |
| #3 The Republic of France or the Islamic Republic of Iran? Both. The Islamic Republic of Frogistan. Sooner then you think. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2003-9-3 8:51:22 PM |
| #2 I willing to bet that chemistry will be a required course. |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2003-9-3 4:17:10 PM |
| #1 Exothermic Reactions 101 |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2003-9-3 1:30:14 PM |