A ‘fatwa’ was issued against the teacher in France who showed pictures of Prophet Mohammed in class, France’s Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said. The teacher, Samuel Paty, was killed on Friday after he discussed cartoons of Prophet Mohammed in class. The father, Brahim Chnina, whose 13-year-old daughter went to Paty’s secondary school, had launched an online call for ‘mobilisation’ against the teacher and had sought his dismissal from the school over the cartoons. Chnina, who is also a preacher, had launched a ‘fatwa’, or Islamic religious ruling, against Paty.
However, it isn’t clear whether the attacker, a 18-year-old Chechen extremist Aboulakh Anzorov, operated independently or because of the fatwa. Anzorov is said to have been seen by witnesses, who said he asked where he could find Paty. Macron labelled the act an Islamist terror attack. Anzorov had yelled, ‘Allah Akbar’ or ‘god is the greatest’ before attacking Path.
On Sunday, thousands marched to lay white roses at Paty’s school. People from all over France—Paris, Nanted, Marseille, Lille, Toulouse, Strasbourg, Bordeaux and Lyon came out to to the streets to show solidarity for Paty.
Anzorov, whose relatives have been arrested is said to have a half sister who joined the ISIS in 2014. Several protestors held signs that read, ‘Je suis Prof, Je suis Samuel’ (meaning ‘I am a teacher, I am Samuel) to echo the ‘I am Charlie’ rallying cry after the 2015 attack on satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. Staff of the newspaper were attacked in 2015 after it published caricatures of Prophet Mohammed.
Some protesters recited ‘Freedom to expression, freedom to teach’, while others sang ‘La Marseillaise’, the French national anthem.
“Through one of its defenders, it is the Republic which has been struck in the heart by Islamist terrorism. In solidarity with its teachers, the State will react with the greatest firmness so that the Republic and its citizens live, free! We will never give up. Never,” PM Jean Castex wrote on Twitter.
