Events leading up to the murder(read note at the end of the page for summary)
Samuel Paty taught a moral and civic education course in early October 2020 on freedom of expression, in accord with the French national curriculum.
He showed some of his teenage students a caricature of Muhammad from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo during a class discussion about freedom of speech.
Before showing the caricature, Paty had invited Muslim students to leave the classroom if they wished.
According to one student, he had previously shown these cartoons as part of the discussion every year since the Charlie Hebdo shooting in 2015. In the largest Sunni sects of Islam, any depiction of Muhammad is considered blasphemous.
According to some sources, Paty showed two cartoons to his students, one of which portrayed Muhammad naked with his genitals exposed although accounts differ on precisely what was presented in the classroom.
Brahim Chnina, a female student’s father, accused Paty of disseminating pornography to students and filed a criminal complaint with the police.
Paty responded by filing a complaint of defamation. Chnina claimed on YouTube and Facebook that Paty had displayed an image of Muhammad nude; he named Paty, and gave the school’s address.
He encouraged other parents to join him in action and mobilise against the teacher, whom he described as a thug.
The Grande Mosque de Pantin published a video on its Facebook page a week before the murder. Abdelhakim Sefrioui, the imam of the mosque, a member of the Conseil des imams de France, and an Islamist militant known to French anti-terrorism police, accompanied the parent in his protest against the teacher in front of the school for showing the caricatures and demanding to meet the school’s principal.
Sefrioui called the teacher a “thug” in a video, while denouncing the administration of the college.
He demanded the teacher’s exclusion from high school with the rectorate. The term “thug” had been repeatedly used by the parent Brahim Chnina earlier. The videos were taken down in the hours after the murder.
Murder
The perpetrator, Abdoullakh Abouyedovich Anzorov, was an 18-year-old Russian immigrant of Chechen ethnic descent, born in Moscow, Russia.
On 16 October 2020, a week and a half after Paty’s freedom-of-speech class, Anzorov, having been driven to Paty’s school by an alleged accomplice, waited outside the gates and asked a number of students to point out the teacher.He paid two students, aged 14 and 15, around 300€ to identify Paty; the two then waited with Anzorov for two hours until they sighted Paty leaving.[60] A Friday, it was the last schoolday before a two-week holiday.Anzorov had told them he intended to “hit” and “humiliate” Paty; according to France’s chief terrorism prosecutor, Jean-François Ricard [fr], in order to “make him apologise for the cartoon of the Prophet [Muhammad]
Anzorov then followed Paty as he left the school. Using a knife 30 centimetres (12 in) long, Anzorov killed Paty and beheaded him in a street near the school where Paty taught, at approximately 5:00 p.m.
In addition to decapitating Paty, Anzorov inflicted a number of wounds to his head, abdomen, and upper limbs. Witnesses told police they heard the killer shout “Allahu Akbar” (the Takbir) during the attack.
Minutes after the murder, the pseudonym @Tchetchene_270 (French: Chechen 270), identified by prosecutor Jean-François Ricard as belonging to Abdoullakh Anzorov, posted on Twitter an image of Paty’s severed head.
The photo was posted with the message: “In the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful, … to Macron, leader of the infidels, I executed one of your hellhounds who dared to belittle Muhammad, calm his fellow human beings before a harsh punishment is inflicted on you.”[3][47][65][66]
The image was seen by many of Paty’s students.
Minutes later, Anzorov was confronted by police about 600 metres (660 yd) from the scene in Éragny, near Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, and the police tried to arrest him.
Anzorov shot at the police with an air rifle and tried to stab them with a knife. The police in response shot him nine times, killing him. On Anzorov’s phone they found a text claiming responsibility, and a photograph of Paty’s body.
Long story short: Teacher showed Muhammad cartoon in a freedom of speech class, gave the option to Muslim students to go out, some parent came to know, protested, main mosque guy protested, news spread like wildifire on social
media(because the mosque guy was kinda popular), enraged radical muslim elements, perperator beheaded the teacher, police shot perpetrator.
Note: the murderer was not a student of the same class, he
was some random guy enraged by social media campaigns.
French government response
President Macron visited the school where Paty had worked, and said that the incident was “a typical Islamist terrorist attack”.(note the word, Islamist and not Islamic)(Islamist is used to refer to fundamentalist, radical islam, while Islamic is anything related to Islam in general)
He also said: “our compatriot was killed for teaching children freedom of speech”.
French Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer called the killing an “attack on the French nation as a whole”.
Jean-Rémi Girard, president of the secondary school teaching union, said teachers were “devastated” but would not be cowed.
France’s anti-terrorist prosecutor said the teacher had been “assassinated for teaching,” and the attack was an assault on the principle of freedom of expression.
Sixteen people were later taken into custody for investigation. They included Anzorov’s grandparents, parents, and 17-year-old brother. Also arrested were Sefrioui, Brahim Chnina, the father of a girl in Paty’s class, who is suspected of issuing a fatwa against Paty, and four students who are suspected of taking money from the killer in exchange for identifying the teacher.
French police announced that there were more than 80 messages on social media from French people supporting the attacker.
The French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, ordered that the Grande Mosque de Pantin was to be closed for six months.
The mosque, which has about 1,500 worshippers situated just north of Paris, was ordered closed for having published videos inciting violence against Samuel Paty. Its imam, Sefrioui, is under investigation and remains under arrest.
The mosque removed the posts after the murder and expressed “regret” over publishing the videos, and published instead an announcement condemning the “savagery” of teacher’s killing.
The interior minister Gérald Darmanin demanded dissolution of two Islamic NGOs: Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) and Barakacity, which he described as “enemies” of the state. Both the NGOs have been accused of taking part in a social media campaign against the teacher, launched by the father of one of his pupils.
The CCIF denied participating in such a harassment campaign. According to the prosecutor Jean-François Ricard, speaking on 21 October, there was a “direct causal link” between the hate campaign and Anzorov’s murder of Paty.
On 21 October a national memorial for Paty, prepared in consultation with his family, washeld at the Sorbonne. President Macron awarded the Légion d’honneur posthumously to Paty.
Texts read at the ceremony included Jean Jaurès‘s Lettre aux instituteurs et institutrices (lit. ‘letter to the teachers’).
In an address of around 15 minutes, Macron described Paty as “a quiet hero” and stated that “we will not give up cartoons”.
Macron also announced that the “Sheikh Yassin Collective” founded by Sefrioui to support Hamas would be dissolved, as having been “directly implicated” in the murder. The government was reported to be preparing to dissolve a further fifty organizations connected
with radical Islam
(this crackdown on mosques and other Islamic organizations made the Muslims really angry!!)
REACTIONS
The hashtags #Je Suis Prof and #Je Suis Enseignant, both meaning “I am a teacher”, were launched in support of the victim and in support of freedom of expression. This was reminiscent of the campaign and hashtag #JeSuisCharlie launched after Charlie Hebdo journalists, and 12 people total, were murdered in an Islamist attack because the magazine had the cartoons depicting Muhammad. Charlie Hebdo issued a statement expressing its “horror and revolt” and gave their support for the family and friends of Paty.
Charlie Hebdo caricatures were displayed on regional authority buildings (French: Hôtels de région) in Toulouse and Montpellier.(this made the muslims all the more angry)
Rallies in protest against the murder, and criticising the government’s ineffective response to radical Islam, took place in Place de la République in Paris, and in other cities across France.
The demonstrators held various placards with statements such as “Je suis Samuel” and “Schools in mourning” written on them. The demonstrators also chanted “Freedom of expression, freedom to teach”, or sang “La Marseillaise,” the French national anthem. Politicians, academics, and envoys joined the demonstrations across France. In Lyon around 12,000 joined the demonstrations, in Toulouse approximately 5,000 turned out, and hundreds more assembled in Nice.
Muslims in France accused the government of a “heavy-handed clampdown” on their communities in the aftermath of the murder.
The attack on Paty polarised French people and politicians alike and led to a public debate on how Islam should be integrated or assimilated into French secular society.
One theme of the debate concerned the education of imams which in part come from abroad.
The terrorist attack also highlighted the problems France faced with integrating foreigners into the French society in a country which was becoming increasingly racially and ethnically diverse and the political establishment formed a consensus that two or three generations of “newcomers” had struggled to integrate.
An opinion poll carried out by Institut français d’opinion publique (Ifop) found that 87% of the respondents considered the secularist society in France (French: Laïcité) was under threat and 79% responded that Islamism had declared war on France and the French Republic.
Turkey-Erdoğan-Macron dispute
(context: Turkey, through its diplomacy is trying to project itself as the protector of all Muslims around the world)(hagia sophia, turned back into a mosque to please islamic nationalists in turkey)
The position taken by Macron was condemned in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey by the dominant AK Party, the Nationalist Movement Party, the secular opposition Republican People’s Party and the Iyi Party, though the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party did not sign the joint declaration condemning Macron’s words.
Following the actions and statements of French President Macron such as describing Islam as a religion “in crisis” worldwide, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan questioned Macron’s mental health, and called for a boycott of French goods Erdoğan claimed Muslims in France were “subjected to a lynch campaign similar to that against Jews in Europe before World War II”, and that “European leaders should tell the French president to stop his hate campaign“.
Erdoğan also attacked Macron personally, saying “Macron needs treatment on a mental level” and asked “What’s the problem of the individual called Macron with Islam and with the Muslims?”] He continued: “What else can be said to a head of state who does not understand freedom of belief and who behaves in this way to millions of people living in his country who are members of a different faith?”
After President Macron defended the publication of cartoons in a tribute to
Paty, there were calls in some Muslim countries to boycott French products.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the Malaysian government,and the
Foreign Ministry of Morocco said that freedom of expression does not apply to
insulting Islam or Muslims, and Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan said
that Macron was promoting Islamophobia. Some French goods were removed
from shops in Jordan, Kuwait, and Qatar,and hundreds of travel agencies in Kuwait suspended booking flights to France.[11] Protests were also held in
Bangladesh, Iraq, and Libya against Macron and his defense of the
caricatures.(even some places in India had the protests against Macron’s
crackdown on mosques and his defence of the cartoons being displayed
publicly)
A few days after the attack, two Muslim women were attacked in France by elements of the extreme right. Hardly any coverage on this.
FRANCE NEW LAW
The French National Assembly, after 135 hours of sometimes heated debate, adopted legislation with the anodyne official purpose of reinforcing “Republican principles” but the tough real objective of shutting down the sources of Islamist terrorism across the country.
Attacked by the left as an infringement of liberties and by the right as a weak compromise, the draft law reflects a decision by President Emmanuel Macron to
defeat what he calls “Islamist separatism” and reinforce the unifying principles of French secularism, which affords no place in politics for religion. It will go to the Senate next month for final approval.(impppp, why left and right, both aren’t happy)(Macron’s party is centrist)
More than 300 amendments to the draft law were adopted, but it retained its core elements and was approved with 347 votes in favor, 151 against, and 65 abstentions. Mr. Macron’s dominant centrist party, La République en Marche, backed the bill.
With 15 months remaining before the presidential election, the left is in disarray,
unable to identify a viable candidate. This has prompted Mr. Macron to embrace
center-right territory for now. He hopes to lure voters who might otherwise vote
for the right-wing Republicans or even for Marine Le Pen, the perennial rightist
candidate.
(impppppp, he knows that since there’ s no real competitor in the Left, and the right wing is growing due to the rising Islamophobia. So he is taking the Left vote for granted and adopting a center-right stand, because the right wing is
projecting him to be a Muslim appeaser, someone who
cannot take hard steps)(so, right appeasement, to keep the right wingers out of power)
The legislation, even in its more moderate final form, constitutes part of this strategy. It extends the requirement of strict religious neutrality beyond civil servants to anyone who is a private contractor of a public service — like bus drivers.
It also creates a new offense of “separatism,” defined as threatening, intimidating or assaulting an elected official or a public-sector employee.
In fact, core French principles have been fraying for some time in an atmosphere
of growing social fracture and confrontation. Muslims, who make up about 8 percent of the population, have often found themselves in dismal projects on the periphery of big cities, feeling neither any attachment to the countries from which their forebears came nor any viable French identity or future. What was left for them was Islam, and in some cases an extremist violent deformation of it
The legislation, containing 51 articles, attempts to curtail the avenues that may lead to such radicalization. It obliges community associations that receive
public funds to sign a contract committing to the “principles of liberty, equality, fraternity, and respect of human dignity.” Any religious association receiving foreign funds will have to provide a strict accounting.
It bans so called “virginity certificates,” provided by some doctors for traditional religious marriages, and demands respect of the equality of men and women. Condoning terrorism becomes an offense that may lead to a ban on holding public office.
In the article that prompted the most virulent debate, and over 400 proposed
amendments, it places severe limits on home-schooling without banning it, as originally proposed. Educating children at home is viewed by the government as a source of the “separatism” that undermines French values, as well as a means for conservative Muslim families to keep young girls from what they see as corrupting influences.
The bill was originally called the “anti-separatism” law, underscoring Mr. Macron’s conviction that every citizen must respect “the rules of the Republic because he or she is a citizen before being a believer or a nonbeliever
CRITICISM FROM THE RIGHT:
“The target is missed because it is not named,” Philippe
Bas, a senator for the Republicans, told Le Figaro. “The target is Islamism which aims to impose its totalitarian law over the law of the Republic.”
CRITICISM FROM THE LEFT
The Socialist Party has deplored the choice of security measures rather than vastly expanded social programs to confront the rise of extremism in dismal suburbs where good schools and job opportunities are scarce.
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