The mother of my daughter didn’t attend yesterday’s rally in Paris to honour the memory of Samuel Paty, the teacher beheaded in a street in the north-west of the French capital last Friday.
A teacher herself in a state school in Seine-Saint-Denis in the north of Paris, a district often cited as the most deprived in France, she was profoundly shocked by the death of Monsieur Paty. Naturally, she has nothing but sympathy for his family but she had no wish to stand shoulder to shoulder with politicians, intellectuals, the judiciary and members of an education authority who for years have offered her profession little or no support in their struggle against Islamic extremism.
Some of those present at the Place de la Republique brandished placards on which was written ‘Je Suis Samuel’, surely a grotesque new low in this age of infantile self-absorption. Many at yesterday’s rally shouting loudly in defence of freedom of expression were at another gathering in Paris last November: an anti-Islamophobe rally at which they were shouting loudly against freedom of expression.
My ex-wife teaches French literature to teenagers.
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