US embassy cable - 05PARIS1882

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 PARIS 001882 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
STATE FOR EUR/PPD, ECA, IIP 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PREL, KPAO, KISL, PHUM, FR 
SUBJECT: VISIT TO FRANCE'S FIRST (AND ONLY) MUSLIM HIGH 
SCHOOL 
 
1. (SBU) In an effort to widen Embassy outreach to Muslim 
communities throughout France, Poloff and Consul Lille 
recently visited the "Lycee Averroes," the first and only 
Muslim high school in France, co-located in the grounds of 
the Grand Mosque of Lille.  We had a friendly, hour-long 
meeting with the school's director, Sylvie Taleb, who offered 
impressions on the school's progress and challenges since its 
founding in 2003. 
 
2. (SBU)  The school, now in its second academic year, 
numbers 45 students, a jump from its first year enrollment of 
just 15.  Lycee Averroes operates as a sort of 
state-sanctioned private charter school, and faces a 
five-year probation period, during which it receives no 
government funding.  (After the probationary period, if the 
school can demonstrate that it meets acceptable academic 
standards, it will be eligible, as a private "contract" 
school, to receive government funding to subsidize salaries 
for teachers.)  Taleb reported that a number of the school's 
teachers work on a voluntary basis, and the school relies on 
charitable donations and tuition charges to stay afloat. 
Taleb said she was seeking to move the school to a larger 
facility prior to the end of the probationary period; based 
on demand, she claimed, the student body could surpass 200 
students, but due to space limitations in the mosque 
facility, it cannot accommodate more than the current 
enrollment.  She added that similar, unrelated projects for 
establishing Muslim private schools were under discussion in 
Marseille, Lyon and Grenoble. 
 
3. (SBU) Taleb stressed from the outset that the school, 
which follows the French national curriculum, is open to 
students of all religious faiths and backgrounds, though the 
current student body is almost entirely Muslim (two students 
are non-Muslim) and primarily of North African origin.  The 
school is co-ed, but she conceded that the main impetus for 
the school was to provide education to girls who had been 
expelled from French public schools for refusing to remove 
their headscarves in school. (All of the students we saw were 
female and veiled, as was Taleb.)   Taleb reported that the 
expulsion of girls from local schools for wearing the 
headscarf dated back to the 1990's and that the mosque had 
long provided a space for informal schooling for such 
students, although in much smaller numbers than today.  Taleb 
dismissed the assessment, widespread in the French press, 
that the GoF implementation of the headscarf ban in schools 
had been a success, with relatively few expulsion cases.  She 
asserted, without providing statistics, that several girls 
had been expelled in the Lille area. (Note: The GoF estimates 
that 47 girls have been expelled this school year for 
refusing to remove the headscarf, a figure which does not 
include students who withdrew from school to seek private or 
home schooling prior to the academic year.  End note). 
Asked about the prevalence of anti-Muslim sentiment locally, 
she quipped,  "wear a veil around town for a day, and you'll 
know what Islamophobia is."  At the same time, she conceded 
that the neighborhood surrounding the school had been 
welcoming of the school's presence, as initial public 
concerns about unruly students overtaking the area had been 
entirely unfounded. 
 
4. (SBU) Taleb also downplayed the Islamic nature of the 
school, asserting that she sought to maintain an open-door 
attitude with the GoF and the local community, in order to 
dispel any misconceptions that the school is a "madrassa." 
She stressed that the school follows the French national 
curriculum, in French, and proudly showed poloff and consul a 
colorful poster designed by students on baroque art, as an 
example of the school's typical academic offerings.  Unlike 
many French schools, the school offered courses in Arabic (as 
well as English), and comparative religion.   Taleb stressed 
that she sought to teach students about Islam, Christianity 
and Judaism, as many of her students were ignorant of the 
latter two religions, just as many French Christians knew 
little about Islam.  Taleb commented that she herself had 
been born Catholic and converted to Islam, and that she spent 
over 10 years teaching French at a Catholic private school 
prior to joining the Lycee Averroes.  She commented that she 
was strongly against "sectarianism" and that there should be 
greater interaction and understanding between France's 
religious communities. 
 
5. (SBU) Asked what set the Lycee Averroes apart from other 
French schools, Taleb cited not the religious aspect of the 
school but the social disadvantages faced by the students. 
Her goal was to teach the students to overcome the social 
barriers facing them, maintain the highest academic standards 
and aim for the upper reaches of French society, to include 
the "grandes ecoles,"  French government careers, and 
financial sector.  She described many of her students and 
their parents as previously unaware of opportunities beyond 
the typical career tracks offered by French schools to 
students of immigrant origin, which she summed up as either 
"work at the Renault factory or tend a vegetable stand."  She 
added that discrimination against students with 
Arabic-sounding names was widespread, and said she knew of 
several Arab-origin, post-graduates who were unable to get 
responses to job openings despite impressive resumes, 
presumably because they "had the wrong name."   Taleb 
stressed that, in her view, the best response to such 
discrimination was for students to prove that they could be 
among the best and use knowledge as a weapon.  While the GOF 
was not helping the school, she conceded, at least it was not 
standing in her way.  She said that the next year of the 
school's operation would be critical as it would mark the 
first time the school's students took the national 
baccalaureate exams; the pass rate for the school would be 
interpreted as a measure of its success.  She added that the 
fact that the school had taken in a number of students who 
were under-performing academically would make matters more 
difficult. 
 
6. (SBU) Poloff and consul closed the discussion by providing 
Taleb a copy of a French-language, USG-produced magazine on 
Muslims in the U.S., which she received with interest.  Taleb 
also expressed interest in receiving English-language 
materials from APP Lille, on subjects of interest such as the 
U.S. civil rights movement.  She commented that the school's 
students were highly politicized, and in general critical of 
U.S. policy as they did not see U.S. actions as matching our 
ideals.  She reiterated, at the same time, belief in the 
importance of dialogue, and said she might be open to hosting 
U.S. speakers at the school, subject to the approval of the 
school's management. 
 
7. (SBU) Comment: In visiting this school, we were struck by 
how U.S. themes of social integration, the immigrant 
experience, and the civil rights movement offer common ground 
for Embassy dialogue with the French Muslim community.  In 
many ways, USG interaction and program approaches based on 
the more general topic of social equality -- i.e., focusing 
on the immigrant background of most French Muslims -- appear 
to have greater potential for resonance with French Muslims 
than focusing only on religion or U.S. policy in the Middle 
East.  End comment. 
 
 
Leach