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France Pays Homage'¯to Slain Teacher Even as Some Question Secular Creed

Lisa Bryant

   PARIS - French President Emmanuel Macron paid a soaring tribute to
   slain history teacher Samuel Paty during a national commemoration
   Wednesday at Paris' Sorbonne University, describing him as incarnating
   values of tolerance and learning, and describing in bleak terms the
   threat of radical Islam.

   "We will not renounce cartoons," said Macron, in reference to cartoons
   of the Prophet Muhammad that Paty used in a class on secular values --
   and which authorities said led to his beheading by an Islamist
   terrorist.

   "Samuel Paty was killed because the Islamists want our future," the
   president said, adding, "they will never have it."

   The ceremony, marked by a moment of silence and the posthumous bestowal
   on Paty of France's highest Legion of Honor award, capped an outpouring
   of grief and anger over Paty's death near the Paris-area school where
   he worked.

   Paty's death has shaken the nation partly for its sheer brutality, but
   also because it attacked what many French consider sacrosanct -- the
   nation's public schools as hubs of critical thinking and free
   expression, along with its staunch creed of laicité, or secularism.

   Yet, along with flowers, marches and tributes -- including mass rallies
   in major cities that have gathered tens of thousands -- the country is
   witnessing a fractured response to its latest terrorist attack, which
   mixes calls for war against Islamist extremism with fears the country
   may be taking its secular ethos too far.

   "There is a political culture that has problems with Islam, and that
   is'¯laicité," said sociologist Farhad Khosrokhavar, a specialist on
   radical Islam. "And'¯laicité'¯is a major problem."

   Prophet Muhammad cartoons

   Paty was killed going home from school last Friday in apparent
   retaliation for showing the controversial cartoons of Islam's Prophet
   Muhammad to his students, during a class on free
   expression.'¯Authorities said seven people, including two minors, would
   appear before an anti-terrorism judge.

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