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Former Top French Official Hopes Teacher's Beheading Will Mark 'Turning
Point'

Jamie Dettmer

   The report was explosive. Sixteen years ago, one of France's top
   education officials, Jean-Pierre Obin, sounded what he hoped would be a
   wake-up call about the "Islamization of French public schools."

   But the report was buried.

   Obin was indignant then and is even more so now after the beheading
   last Friday of a high school teacher on the outskirts of Paris
   following a social-media campaign targeting him for showing cartoons of
   the Prophet Muhammad to his students.

   "I am horrified," Obin told Le Journal du Dimanche in an interview. "I
   feel both sadness and the anger of someone who saw this coming from
   afar," he added.

   He says for a decade and a half, French schools have been in denial and
   officials have been "closing their eyes instead of facing reality."

   Only last month the now-retired Obin published a book: "How Did We Let
   Islamism Penetrate Schools?" The book is likely now to become a
   bestseller in the wake of Friday's murder of Samuel Paty, a well-liked
   history and geography teacher, by Chechen-born Abdullakh Anzorov, 18.

   On Monday, French police raided the homes of dozens of radical
   Islamists in the French capital, arresting among others the radical
   cleric Abdelhakim Sefraoui, for incitement. Gérald Darmanin, France's
   interior minister, said Monday that the targets of the raids were not
   suspected of involvement in the murder but were known activists. "We
   have the clear intention of passing a message. There will not be a
   minute's respite for enemies of the republic," he said.

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