“It is better to have demanding support than a sanction from the State”

The Cross : The Rhône prefecture has launched a procedure to terminate the association contracts linking the private Muslim high school Al Kindi to the State. This decision comes after the loss of the state contract for the Averroès Muslim high school, in Lille, this year. How to analyze this context?

Haoues Seniguer: Since the attacks of 2015, we have observed a hypersensitivity of the State towards Muslim individuals and organizations, which I call “the politics of suspicion”. This does not come from nowhere: this suspicion is linked to an objective risk of violent action by certain individuals in the name of Islam in a jihadist context.

There have always been tensions around Islam (at least since the colonial era), but since 2015, the suspicion has shifted and accentuated. For a very long time, the State was mainly interested in actors or organizations that advocated violent jihadist action, with more or less declarative intentions. However, since 2015, he has made the hypothesis of the continuum, that is to say that any conservative manifestation of Islam or any rigorous discourse, especially if it has a more or less political dimension, would be the antechamber of a desire, at least to separate from the rest of society, at most to commit violent acts.

Is it illegitimate to think that forms of religious rigorism can constitute a threat to society?

HS: No, it happens, but I would qualify: if we look at the profile of the latest people involved in jihadist attacks, we will notice that most of them have not long been associated with local Muslim communities or collectives. so-called Salafists or Islamists. This continuum approach poses intellectual and especially political problems. A stricter denounces terrorist violence more often than he justifies it.

Another problem with this approach: the State no longer only takes individualized measures but also measures that resemble collective punishments. This is the case of the Al Kindi establishment: the prefecture is on the verge of depriving an educational community of subsidies in the name of supposed or real professional failings of teachers or the presence of works of which we do not know they were used, nor how. These two points demonstrate an encompassing vision of the State which no longer targets individuals, for duly substantiated facts, but groups, with a very extensive vision of what we can call Islamism or Salafism whose use has become commonplace in public discourse as much as it has lost precision.

Even if it does not lead to violent action, does the risk of separatism through religious rigor not justify increased surveillance?

HS: This is a sensitive issue that falls under the cultural debate. Today, modern societies, particularly in North America and Western Europe, are plural. In this context, the State may wish to harmonize worldviews, but cannot impose the terms. We can thus observe social and cultural separatism. School can be a way to resolve cultural differences and make individuals feel like they belong to the same society. This is essential. The State expects citizens to respect each other in a civic spirit. But he cannot unify morals or teach morality. In my opinion, this is not his responsibility.

The prefecture criticizes the Al Kindi establishment in particular for having kept in its documentary collection works “promoting a discourse contrary to the values ​​of the Republic”. How to qualify these works?

HS: They are very ambivalent. The Way of the Muslim, by Abu Bakr Al-Jazairi is a classic work found in mosques, very conservative, with a Salafist dimension. It contains very virulent passages, which are at odds with modern discourse; they are therefore no longer audible at all today, including in Muslim homes. And then other passages relate to classical and universalist ethics such as: “The Muslim does not commit iniquity towards himself and others. »

Generally, classical texts – including the Koran – include aspects which relate to a universal ethic and others which are much more murky and violent. The question you need to ask yourself is: “What do people remember when they read these books? How are they used if at all? » The prefecture does not respond to this since it only notes the most seditious passages.

That said, in my opinion, the establishment still lacked an ethic of responsibility since it should have, before there was an intervention by state services, looked at this documentary collection and expunge of all these references which, handled without caution, can maintain a violent, very divisive or discriminatory social imagination. But present or not, these books contain ideas that exist and that cannot be banned. All that remains is to combat them in the debate.

The management of the establishment regrets that the sanction brandished is the termination of the contract, without there being any possibility of rectifying the situation, thus causing the rupture of the last association contract which linked a Muslim high school to the State. What do you think of this measure?

HS: I believe that it is better to have demanding support from the State rather than a sanction without any other form of trial. This would give the feeling that nothing is forgiven for the Muslim community, which is also in a form of learning. It should be remembered that Muslim establishments under contract are very few in number in the French landscape compared to other confessional establishments. And I believe that if the actors had a subversive vision, they would not have entered into a contract with the State, since this demonstrates a desire to submit to its control.