The public rapporteur recommends restoring the establishment’s contract

The public rapporteur, magistrate responsible for enlightening the administrative courts, recommended Tuesday March 18 to restore the contract between the State and the Lille Muslim Lycée Averroès, broken by the prefecture in 2023 for “Serious breaches of the fundamental principles of the Republic”.

The decision was deliberated on April 23.

The public rapporteur, responsible for analyzing and proposing a legal solution, challenged for more than an hour point by point most of the grievances of the prefecture, believing that they were not established. He also found that certain shortcomings raised were well established, but that they were not serious enough to justify a termination of the contract.

“It is a relief for Averroes”said the lawyer for the establishment Sefen Guez before the Lille administrative court.

On December 7, 2023, the Northern Prefect had ended the Averroès contract, which has therefore been deprived of public subsidies since the start of the 2024 school year.

Principal Muslim high school under contract in France until then, he saw his workforce drop from 470 to 290 students. To ensure its school year in September 2024 and finance its operation, the establishment has doubled tuition fees and launched an online kitty.

“No convincing element”

The public rapporteur considered that it did not exist in the procedure “No convincing element” Provising the use of works contrary to the values ​​of the Republic.

The prefect had denounced the mention, in the bibliography of a course in Muslim ethics, of a collection of religious texts containing comments advocating the death penalty in the event of apostasy as well as the segregation of the sexes. Gold “No element allows you to say” that this work “Would have been studied”underlined the magistrate.

The prefecture also evoked the preponderance of religious works on Islam to the detriment of other religions at the Center for Documentation and Information (CDI).

The public rapporteur noted “Ten pounds dealing with religion other than Islam” And “Other books dealing with secularism” in the CDI. National Education had carried out several inspections, without finding matter to question the association contract.

A representative of the prefecture indicated before the court to be “Extremely surprised” recommendations from the public rapporteur. “It’s an excellent high school”but according to him there is “A porosity between Averroes pedagogy and a number of currents” linked to the Muslim brothers. “We cannot finance an establishment which considers that divine law is greater than the law of the Republic,” he hammered.

“Historical trial”

Two decisions of the administrative court, rendered in February and July 2024, had confirmed in summary proceedings of the contract.

During the last audience, Me Guez had alerted to the consequences of this termination, likely to train “A slow death of the establishment”with many scholarship students and regularly classified among the best in the region.

Last week, the Lyon Administrative Court, for its part refused in summary proceedings to restore the contract of one of the only two other convenient Muslim high schools, Al Kindi.

For the Averroès association which manages the Lille school, this trial, the first on the merits, is “A historical trial which involves the honor and pride of our State to enforce the fundamental principles of the Republic, freedom, equality and fraternity”.

Before the hearing she had deplored them ” systematic monitoring “ in Muslim private education, and pointed out a “Treatment inequality” Between contracts under contracts under contract and other private establishments.

The head of the establishment, Éric Dufour, cites in particular the Stanislas high school in Paris, whose contract was not terminated despite the excesses indicated by a report of the National Education.

Founded in 2003 after the prohibition of the School veil, the Averroès high school had become in 2008 the first Muslim establishment to go under contract with the State.

France currently has 77 Muslim schools, six of which are entirely or partially under contract, according to data from the Ministry of Education.

At the start of the 2023 school year, before the terminations of Al Kindi contracts, for breaches and “Breakdown in the values ​​of the Republic”and d’Averroès, the National Federation of Private Muslim education welcomed 1,886 students in contracts under contract.

The number of establishments outside the contract having declared a Muslim obedience increased from 53 in 2016 to 71 currently.