PARIS – French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal on March 27 defended French secularism following the resignation of a Paris school principal who received death threats after asking a student to remove her Muslim veil on the premises.

Mr Attal, a former education minister, said the state would be filing a complaint against the student over falsely accusing the headmaster of mistreatment during the incident in late February.

“The state... will always stand with these officials, those who are on the front line faced with these breaches of secularism, these attempts of Islamist entryism in our education establishments,” he said on the TF1 television channel.

Secularism and religion are hot-button issues in France, which is home to Europe’s largest Muslim community.

In 2004, the authorities banned school children from wearing “signs or outfits by which students ostensibly show a religious affiliation”, such as headscarves, turbans or kippas, on the basis of the country’s secular laws, which are meant to guarantee neutrality in state institutions.

The government in 2023 said it was also banning the abaya – a garment worn by Muslim women that covers the body from the neck to the feet – in schools.

The headmaster’s departure comes amid deep tensions in the country following a series of incidents including the killing of a teacher by an Islamist former pupil in 2023.

The headmaster at the Maurice-Ravel high school in eastern Paris quit after receiving death threats online following an altercation with a student in February, officials told AFP on March 26.

On Feb 28, he had asked three students to remove their Islamic headscarves on school premises, but one of them – an adult who was at the school for vocational training – refused and an altercation ensued, according to prosecutors.

The principal later received death threats online.

In a message addressed to the school’s staff, quoted by French communist daily L’Humanite, the principal said that he had taken the decision to leave for his “safety and that of the school”.

Education officials said he had taken “early retirement”.

Mr Attal told TF1 that the headmaster had been supposed to retire in June, and decided to leave a little earlier.

The student had lodged a complaint against the principal, accusing him of mistreating her during the incident.

She told French daily Le Parisien that she had been “hit hard on the arm” by the headmaster.

But the Paris prosecutor’s office on March 27 told AFP that her complaint had been dismissed.

An investigation has been opened into cyber-harassment following the death threats against the headmaster.

A ‘collective failure’

Politicians from across the spectrum on March 27 said they were shocked by the resignation.

“It’s a disgrace,” Mr Bruno Retailleau, head of the right-wing Republican faction in the Senate Upper House, said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Mr Boris Vallaud, head of the Socialist deputies in the National Assembly Lower House, told television broadcaster France 2 that the incident was “a collective failure”.

Ms Marion Marechal, the granddaughter of far-right patriarch Jean-Marie Le Pen and a far-right politician herself, spoke on Sud Radio of a “defeat of the state” in the face of “the Islamist gangrene”.

Ms Maud Bregeon, a lawmaker with President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party, also took aim at “an Islamist movement”.

“The authority lies with school heads and teachers, and we have a duty to support this educational community,” Ms Bregeon said.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo called the principal to “assure him of her total support and solidarity”, said her office, adding she was “appalled and dismayed”.

Bomb threats

The Education Ministry earlier said that the principal’s decision to leave his post was “understandable given the seriousness of the attacks against him”.

Education Minister Nicole Belloubet had visited the school in early March and said she deplored the “unacceptable attacks”.

A 26-year-old man has been arrested for making death threats against the principal on the Internet. He is due to stand trial in April.

The uproar comes as dozens of French schools have received threats in recent weeks.

Mr Attal has pledged to “hunt down” the people responsible for sending them.

Around 50 schools in Paris received new bomb threats on March 27, some including a “very violent video”, the education authorities said. The mayor’s office said classes were briefly interrupted for security checks.

The Prime Minister pledged to increase security, including near schools, after the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria extremist group claimed responsibility for the killing of 137 people at a Moscow concert on March 22. AFP