French Muslim School Challenges Contract Termination in Court

On 10 March 2025, Moroc­co World News report­ed that Al-Kin­di, France’s only pri­vate Mus­lim high school with state part­ner­ship, is appeal­ing the ter­mi­na­tion of its con­tract by French author­i­ties in the admin­is­tra­tive court of Lyon. The arti­cle begins:

Rabat – Al-Kin­di, the only pri­vate high school in France and the sole Mus­lim insti­tu­tion with state part­ner­ship, is stand­ing before the admin­is­tra­tive court of Lyon today to appeal author­i­ties’ deci­sion to ter­mi­nate its con­tract. The pre­fec­ture of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes announced ear­li­er on Jan­u­ary 10 the ter­mi­na­tion of Al Kin­di pri­ma­ry school, mid­dle school and high school, on alle­ga­tions of “car­ry­ing out a project con­trary to the val­ues of the Repub­lic,” as well as “defects and dys­func­tions” that were observed dur­ing inspec­tion. The inspec­tion report, car­ried out in Octo­ber of 2024 fol­low­ing anoth­er in April of the same year, stat­ed that two “rad­i­cal” books were found at the school library, one of which they claim prompts “vio­lent jihad.”…

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Key Points:

• French author­i­ties ter­mi­nat­ed Al-Kindi’s con­tract cit­ing “rad­i­cal” books in the library and state­ments from a pro­fes­sor sup­port­ing con­tro­ver­sial imams.
• School offi­cials claim they addressed con­cerns by amend­ing rules and dis­miss­ing the pro­fes­sor involved in con­tro­ver­sial remarks.
• Local coun­cil­lor Farid Ben­mous­sa notes Mus­lim schools face annu­al inspec­tions while Catholic schools are inspect­ed only once every fif­teen years.
• Only two high schools have lost accred­i­ta­tion in France in thir­ty years, and both were Mus­lim insti­tu­tions, rais­ing con­cerns about poten­tial dis­crim­i­na­to­ry practices.

In Jan­u­ary 2025, Le Monde report­ed that the pre­fec­ture had said about Al-Kin­di: “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. In Decem­ber 2023, the GIOR report­ed that France had announced the ter­mi­na­tion of fund­ing for Aver­roes, its largest Mus­lim high school, cit­ing admin­is­tra­tive fail­ures and ques­tion­able teach­ing prac­tices. The Aver­roes School had for­mer­ly been led by Amar Las­far, who also served as pres­i­dent of the French Mus­lim Broth­er­hood umbrel­la group Musul­mans de France.

Dis­claimer: The GIOR uti­lizes AI to gen­er­ate sum­maries of news items, includ­ing the intro­duc­tion and the key points that fol­low. Any text fol­low­ing the key points is con­text added by GIOR edi­tors. Please ver­i­fy all infor­ma­tion before using. Images are also AI-gen­er­at­ed and are for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es only—they are meant to rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als con­cerned but should not be under­stood as “real world” photography.