PARIS (CNS): “We will defend schools and those who form them, so ignorance can be fought everywhere,” Archbishop Laurent Ulrich of Lille, president of the bishops’ Council for Catholic Education, said as
France’s Catholic bishops joined Muslim leaders in condemning the beheading of a teacher in a Paris suburb.
The archbishop was reacting to the October 16 beheading of Samuel Paty, a history and geography teacher, outside his school at Conflans-Sainte-Honorine.
“We will not back down in trusting in fraternity between people, formed through dialogue between social groups, religions and cultures, between knowledge, faith and reason. As Catholics, we assure the Muslims of our country that we will always be in dialogue with them” the archbishop said.
In an October 19 statement, Archbishop Ulrich said Catholics felt “deeply united” with educators everywhere after the outrage and would stand with others in an “educational pact” for “social friendship, dialogue and fraternity.”
Meanwhile, Archbishop Jean-Paul James of Bordeaux, pledged solidarity with those “profoundly affected” by the attack, in a message with the southern city’s Muslim grand imam, Tareq Oubrou, and other religious leaders.
“The best bulwark against barbarism, fanaticism and terrorism remains fraternity, education and unity,” the joint declaration said. “The French Republic guarantees common rules that give everyone the dignity they have a right to. This is how our coexistence is built, on the defense of freedom of conscience and expression, on education in mutual respect.”
French prosecutors said on October 21 that they had raided at least 40 residences and arrested 16 people in connection with the street killing of Paty, who had shown cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a class discussion on free speech. The 18-year-old attacker was shot and killed by police.
In a statement, the French bishops’ conference said the outrage indicated “fraternity is a matter of urgency.”
The grand imam of al-Alzhar Mosque in Egypt, Sheikh Ahmad el-Tayeb, widely considered Sunni Islam’s highest authority, denounced the “deviant, false thought” behind the murder and dissociated it from “the rulings of the religion of Islam and teachings of the prophet.”
He said in a message to an Oct. 20 interfaith peace meeting in Rome,
“At the same time, I reiterate that insulting religions and abusing sacred religious symbols under the slogan of the freedom of expression are forms of intellectual terrorism and a blatant call for hatred.”
He stressed, “This terrorist does not speak for the religion of the Prophet Muhammad any more than the terrorist in New Zealand, who killed Muslims in a mosque, spoke for the religion of Jesus.”
