France: Muslim private schools under threat of closure

More than 600 primary and secondary students at the Al Kindi private Muslim school group, located in the suburbs of Lyon, in central-eastern France, risk not returning to their school at the start of the next academic year.

On 10 January, the prefecture terminated the association contract with the state of this institution founded in 2007 and withdrew public subsidies amounting to 1.5 million euros ($1.53m), which were used to cover tuition fees and the salaries of around 30 teachers.

Prefect Fabienne Buccio said she based her decision on a school board inspection report that accused Al Kindi of a series of pedagogical and administrative “failures” as well as “attacks on the values of the Republic”.

Seen by Sunna Files Website, the report from the inspection, carried out in October 2024 following another one in April that year, mentions the discovery of two books deemed “radical” in the school library, one of which “promoting violent jihad”.

It also highlights controversial remarks made by a professor on his YouTube channel, where he supported controversial imams, some of whom have been expelled from France. The report also denounces internal regulations deemed discriminatory against girls, such as a ban on skin-tight tops or makeup.

“Far from being a series of isolated facts, these failures and dysfunctions demonstrate the proximity of the Al Kindi schools to the thinking of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose project is contrary to the values of the Republic,” the prefecture said.

The world’s largest Sunni Muslim organisation founded in 1928 by Egyptian Islamic scholar Hassan al-Banna, which is involved in democratic politics in various countries, has been in the French authorities’ cross-hairs for some time.

In October, Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said he was not ruling out classifying the Muslim Brotherhood as a “terrorist” group and banning it, while advocating for the establishment of a new criminal offence to fight political Islam in the country.

“We must be particularly wary of this Islamist infiltration that is spreading within associations, sports clubs, schools and even local authorities,” Retailleau said.

Less schools, more controls

About a year ago, similar reasons were given by the Nord prefecture to sanction Averroes, the main private denominational Muslim high school under contract in the country, located in the northern city of Lille.

Despite several appeals, the school has not managed to reverse the decision.

As the partnership contracts between the state and private schools give rise to subsidies, in exchange for teaching the education ministry’s curricula and accepting children without distinction of origin, opinion or belief, Averroes had to compensate by doubling the tuition fees. As a result, it lost half of his students.

“In both cases, these are political measures. We are hitting Muslims to make us forget what is wrong in France,” Idrissi, whose children attend Al Kindi, told media sources.

“The National Rally dictates its law and everyone toes the line. We are sacrificed like the Jews in the 1940s,” he added, in reference to the far-right party led by Marine Le Pen, which holds the largest number of seats in parliament.

In an op-ed published in a local newspaper, Farid Benmoussa, councillor of a working-class town in the suburbs of Lyon, noted that “only two high schools ha[d] lost their accreditation in 30 years, and unsurprisingly, they [were] two Muslim schools”.

Yet, like Averroes, Al Kindi had until then enjoyed an excellent reputation, with very good results in the baccalaureate exam.

Al Kindi’s director, Abdelouahb Bakli, declared that his school group was respectful of the values of the Republic, and that the shortcomings observed during the inspection were minor and had been largely corrected.

“For the past three years, private Muslim schools have faced a lot of inspections. Private Catholic schools are inspected once every 15 years, while private Muslim schools, whether under contract or not, are inspected every year,” he said.

According to the National Federation of Private Muslim Education (FNEM), there are 127 Muslim denominational schools in France, but only 10 are fully or partially under contract.

If the ruling concerning Al Kindi is upheld, there will be only one class under contract left in the whole country in September.

In comparison, 7,045 Catholic schools are under contract, enrolling two million students each year (one out of six). In a report published last year, two MPs criticised the lack of financial and pedagogical monitoring of these Catholic institutions that are mostly funded by public money.

In a press release published in October, the FNEM denounced unequal treatment.

“While Islam is the second religion in France, the Muslim community remains largely under-equipped in private schools,” the group said, as around 10 percent of the population, that is an estimated 6.8 million people, are Muslims, making Islam the country’s second-largest religion after Catholicism.

“For five years, the openings of private Muslim schools have been very limited in comparison with other networks. Worse, the trend is towards administrative closure or termination of association contracts,” FNEM’s president, Makhlouf Mameche, said.

He noted that the demand for Muslim schools had never been so strong and the supply so reduced, which reflects “the problematic situation in which private Muslim education finds itself in France”.

Citing Averroes but also Avicenne – a private non-contracted Muslim secondary school located in the southern city of Nice, which was the subject of a prefectural closure order that was finally overturned by the courts – the FNEM considered that “these decisions undermine the fundamental principle of equal treatment and unfairly reduce freedom of education”.

‘Disparity in treatment’

Since the 2021 “law consolidating the principles of the republic”, pushed forward by President Emmanuel Macron to fight “separatism”, 11 schools have been closed for “radicalisation”.

The legislation has been accused by its detractors of being discriminatory against Muslims by broadening the grounds for closing mosques and dissolving community organisations, restricting home schooling and introducing an offence of “separatism” punishable by up to five years in prison.

In Al Kindi, the inspections that previously took place on a yearly basis with rather positive results have followed one another at a more sustained pace.

“There were five in 2024. The April inspection took place unexpectedly in the presence of 12 inspectors. This is the one that led to the report of referral to the national education commission by the prefecture along with a request to terminate the contract with the state,” Karim Chihi, deputy director of Al Kindi, told MEE.

Chihi said that the school learned of the decision through the press and not through an official letter as is customary.

“We were surprised by this measure because the meeting of the education commission had taken place in a very courteous manner,” Chihi added.

“If there were shortcomings, why were they not discovered during the previous inspections? We would have at least received warnings to make corrections. But there had never been any negative observations,” he told local media.

The school’s lawyers, Hakim Chergui and Sefen Guez Guez, are expected to take legal action soon, both against the prefecture and the region, which decided to cut its subsidies to the school as early as January, without waiting for the end of the partnership with local authorities in September.

According to Chergui, who is also one of Al Kindi’s cofounders, the arguments raised in the prefecture’s report are only pretexts.

“It is politics that drapes itself in false educational arguments,” he told MEE, believing that the administration’s decision “carries great violence against the Muslims of France”.

In an open letter addressed on 18 January to President Macron, the council of mosques of the Lyon region pointed out that despite a negative inspection report last year on the Parisian Catholic high school, Stanislas, which was accused of homophobia, sexism and authoritarianism, it has not lost its contract with the state.

“Such disparity in treatment can only raise legitimate questions about the equality of treatment between citizens and institutions in our country,” the letter stated.

For their part, researchers attribute the termination of the state contract with Al Kindi, as with Averroes, to “a policy of suspicion” towards Islam.

They warn that this type of measure could promote “the rise of clandestine teaching firms”.

Meanwhile, to prevent Al Kindi from being closed, its management has launched an online fundraising campaign, that has reached more than 255,000 euros so far.