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<p class="gmail-sans-serif" style="margin:10px 0px 0px"><b>
by <a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/author/Yves+Mamou"><span>Yves Mamou</span></a><br>
<time class="gmail-nocontent" datetime="2016-09-01T05:30:00">September 1, 2016 at 5:30 am</time></b></p>
<p class="gmail-nocontent" style="margin:0px 0px 10px"><b><a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8793/france-secession-muslims">https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8793/france-secession-muslims</a></b></p>
</div><br>"............<br>Many of the Muslims in secondary schools began objecting to the school curriculum, according what is <i>halal</i> (permitted) or <i>haram</i> (forbidden):
<blockquote><p>"Very frequently there is a refusal or an objection to
certain kinds of literary works. Philosophers of the Age of
Enlightenment, especially Voltaire and Rousseau, and all the
philosophical works who submit religion to rational examination.
'Rousseau is contrary to my religion,' explained one student while
leaving the class before the end. Molière and especially "Le Tartuffe"
-- a satire of religious bigotry -- were the most popular targets: there
was refusal to study, refusal to play, refusal to attend or else
disturbances when actors were on stage. The same rejection applied to
literary works that many considered licentious, (example, "Cyrano de
Bergerac"), free-thinking or in favor of the freedom of women (<i>Madame Bovary</i>
by Gustave Flaubert). They also refuse to study authors such as
Chretien de Troyes because they believe the goal of that teaching is to
promote Catholicism... There is every indication that students are
encouraged from the outside to distrust everything the teacher can teach
them, and to distrust any food proposed to them at school's cafeteria.
They are encouraged to select what they want to learn according the
religious categories of halal and haram".</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In trying to teach history, the problems -- perhaps not for everyone but for many -- were worse:</p>
<blockquote><p>"On a general matter, everything that is connected to
history of Christianity and Judaism is a matter to be contested. There
are many examples, some surprising: refusal to learn about the
construction of cathedrals, or to open the history book on a page where
there is a reproduction of Byzantine church. They also refuse to learn
about pre-Islamic religions in Egypt or the Sumerian origin of writing.
Sacred history is continuously opposed to factual history. The objection
becomes the norm and can escalate to radicalization when the program
addresses sensitive issues such as the Crusades, the genocide of the
Jews (they negate the reality of the Holocaust), Israeli-Arab wars and
the Palestinian problem. In civic education, secularism is considered
anti-religious".</p><p>............"<br></p>
</blockquote></div>