A student has been expelled from a school in France after defending the murder of history teacher Samuel Paty. Paty was murdered by an Islamic extremist earlier this year after he showed a picture of the Islamic prophet Mohammed in class during a debate on freedom of speech.
Paty was beheaded by an 18-year-old Chechen refugee who had been granted asylum in France as a child. The teacher had even asked children who may be offended by the image to leave the class if they felt they would object to the image being shown. What followed was an online campaign of abuse directed at the teacher by parents of children at the school and eventually his merciless killing. The attacker was shot dead by police after the attack.
According to the French radio station 'Bleu', the student made the comment just 2 weeks after Paty was killed and the incident occurred in the town of Saint-Jean-de-Luz in southwestern France, near the Spanish border. The student apparently said that Paty 'deserved' to be murdered for insulting the prophet Mohammed, and that "no one has the right to make fun of religion".
Following a meeting of the desciplinary panel with the student's parents, the student was expelled. An education option was offered to the parents at "another establishment" France Bleu reposrted.
This is not an isolated incident. It has been reported that more than 792 similar incidents of students defending the murder have been reported across France. This has resulted in 131 students being suspended and 44 being expelled.
French President Emmanuel Macron has courted controversy in recent months by saying that many French Muslims had not properly integrated into mainstream French secular society and that some were ghettoised. The comments sparked furious anger across the Islamic world and a number of protests were staged. One former leader of Malaysia even said that Muslims reserved the right to kill as many French people as they wished in response to France's historic actions in its colonies.
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