PARIS: An administrative court on Wednesday overturned France’s decision to cut government funding to the country’s biggest Muslim high school in 2023, in what rights groups say is part of a wider crackdown on Muslim schools.
Private school Averroes, the first Muslim high school to open in mainland France in 2003 in the northern city of Lille, had 800 pupils in 2023 and had been under contract with the state since 2008. Pupils follow the regular French curriculum, and are also offered religion classes.
At the end of 2023, the government’s local representative known as the ‘prefecture’ said the school had administrative and financial problems and some teaching did not align with French republican values, therefore public funding was to be cut.
In its Wednesday ruling, the Lille administrative court said the prefecture didn’t provide sufficient evidence that the school was failing to comply with French republican values. Other failings for which the prefecture did have evidence, such as refusing a surprise inspection, did not give sufficient grounds to justify ending its contract with the school.
“It’s a victory for the rule of law,” the high school said in a statement on Wednesday. “Averroes is a high school aiming for excellence and will now be able to continue its work with its pupils serenely.”
As a result of the ruling, the high school’s contract with the state will be automatically reinstated, Paul Jablonski, a lawyer for Averroes, told Reuters. He added he hoped the prefecture would not appeal the ruling.
The Lille prefecture didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

BERLIN: Germany said Wednesday it was monitoring changing Russian sabotage tactics, after media reports linked a plan to plant explosive devices on cargo planes to low-level operatives hired by Moscow.
European intelligence services believed that Russia was behind the plot, which saw parcels explode at two DHL depots last July, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily and public broadcasters WDR and NDR reported.
Several people implicated in the operation were believed to be “disposable” agents with no official position in the Russian intelligence services, according to the report.
Such low-level agents were typically recruited via messaging apps to carry out tasks for money, the report said.
Quizzed about the incidents at a regular press conference, German interior ministry spokeswoman Sonja Kock said investigations were “continuing intensively.”
Kock declined to go into detail but said German authorities were “closely observing the means Russian services are now resorting to,” including the use of “so-called low-level agents.”
Kock also told the briefing that Russian intelligence services operating in Germany had been “recently weakened by the expulsion of numerous agents.”
Another interior ministry official later told AFP that she was referring to the April 2022 expulsion of 40 Russian diplomats who were intelligence officers, and further departures of diplomats the following year.
The explosions at DHL depots in Leipzig, Germany and Birmingham in Britain have been described by Germany’s domestic intelligence chief Thomas Haldenwang as a “lucky accident” because of the limited impact.
Testifying before a parliamentary committee in October, Haldenwang said “there would have been a crash” if the parcels had exploded mid-flight on planes.
Kock said Wednesday that the “danger of sabotage... has increased significantly in Germany since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.”
German authorities were doing “everything in our power to thwart... Russian espionage, sabotage and cyber-attacks,” she said.