Quebec fires group of Moroccan teachers for introducing Islamic rules in public schools
A report accuses them of banning girls from playing soccer, not teaching science or sex education, praying in classrooms, humiliating and assaulting students, and generally subjecting the school to the influence of the local mosque.
Bedford School
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Quebec It has taken seven years to act against Muslim infiltration. at the Bedford School in Montreal. Le Journal of Montreal it explains that officials have long had a 97-page report tucked away in a drawer in which the word «Islam» does not appear, but everyone understands that it is about Islam. The parents know it, the teachers know it and the officials who drafted the report know it. For seven years the education administration did nothing to protect the pupils. Now the government has reacted because the issue has hit the press and has expelled the eleven teachers identified as forming a "religious clan.".
The Premier of Quebec, François Legault, has spoken plainly. After learning of the case, he has denounced “the attempt by a group of teachers to introduce Islamist religious concepts into a state school”. He recalled that Quebec had decided some time ago to remove religion from schools.“We will never accept going backwards.”he warned. The government has announced audits in seventeen more schools where there are suspicions of Islamist infiltration. Now in Quebec the political message is clear: If a state school is subject to a religious logic, the government intervenes..
Football banned for girls, science sidelined and pupils humiliated
The image that emerges from the Bedford case is the of a state school under Islamic discipline. According to the report, the Muslim Moroccan teachers had created a climate of control, intimidation and fear within the centre because they continued educational criteria dictated by the Islamic vision they received at the neighbourhood mosque where they were all going.
Islamic influence was translated into concrete decisions in the classroom and on the playground. According to the report, The girls could not play football because the teachers of the «Islamist clan» considered it a sport reserved for boys.. Science was sidelined or taught inadequately. Sex education had practically disappeared from the school curriculum. In other words, pupils not only received less education: They received an education filtered through a religious morality that was opposed to science, critical thinking and sex education.. According to the testimonies collected, the football case was the most striking, but all activities were subject to a conservative view of roles between men and women.
The report also includes cases of humiliation and assaults in the classroom unbecoming of Western civilisation. The document states that some pupils who did not do their homework were forced to stand against the wall, and it was common to have their ears pulled for making mistakes. Degrading remarks in front of their classmates were commonplace, to the extent that some witnesses describe lessons marked by silence, fear and very strict discipline.
The «Islamic clan» that dominated school life
The report describes the Moroccan group as a «clan»within the centre that dominated the daily lives of students and teachers. Teachers opposed to the practices of the expelled group were also victims of intimidation. and fear. Fellow Muslims who questioned his methods were singled out, pressured or isolated. Meetings became tense, criticisms were rejected and any attempt to set boundaries ended in reprisals. In the end, the critics asked to be transferred.
Bedford was not just a school with pupils subjected to Islamic discipline: It was a centre where a section of the teachers had managed to instil fear even in their own colleagues.. The result was a school split in two. On one side, the group that imposed its criteria, rejected criticism and controlled the atmosphere of the centre. On the other, teachers who tried to denounce what was happening and ended up intimidated or isolated. In between, the pupils: children who grew up for years in an atmosphere of tension, censorship and submission without anyone doing anything.
The report that explains everything without mentioning «Islam»
The report explains the facts but conceals the name of the problem. It speaks of a “cultural model”, of “different visions of education” and of the mosque's “strong influence”, yet it avoids writing the word Islam. It even mentions teachers praying in the classroom and performing «ablutions» in the toilets, but always wrapped in administrative language. It doesn't speak of Islamic infiltration, it speaks of “tensions”. It doesn't speak of religious pressure, it speaks of ’community influence“. It doesn't speak of a public school subject to Islamic criteria, it speaks of ”educational models“. And so on for 97 pages, which gather all kinds of testimonies from those who dared to speak at some point over the past seven years.
The role of the union is also part of the problem. For years, The Bedford case became caught up in the usual machinery of labour disputes.complaints, meetings, internal tensions and corporate protection of the teaching staff. When the Ministry of Education finally withdrew the licences, the union merely said that the investigation process was “tainted” and announced that it would support the teachers if they decided to challenge the revocation. For the union, the focus of the debate is not the children of Bedford but the labour rights of those involved.
In contrast, the political response to Quebec is overwhelming and almost unanimous. The opposition parties They support on the revocation of licences: the liberal Michelle Setlakwe they say they do not want these teachers “near our children”, Pascal Bérubé, of the Parti Québécois, guarantees the decision. Even the far left of Québec Solidaire He says it is “very good” that they have been sacked and that this is what had to happen.. Unlike what often happens, no one has turned the case into an accusation of Islamophobia or stigmatisation of the Muslim community.
The usual critics of the Quebec government's secularist crusade have been left speechless by the Bedford case. The government has seized on the Bedford case to show precisely that the bet needs to be strengthened. After years of silences, euphemisms and reports that avoid mentioning “Islam”, Quebec decides to act with sanctions, licence revocations, audits and new regulations. The debate remains open, but the institutional message is clear: religion can exist in society, but it cannot govern the public school.
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