Law Professor Under Investigation for Inflammatory Remarks About Islam and Judaism

"There is no freedom of conscience in Islam. If you are born to a Muslim father, you are a Muslim for life. A kind of sexually transmitted religion, I never understood. It’s like Judaism, it’s the same, it’s through the mother. A kind of STD, of RTD, of sexually transmitted religion," these are the remarks of the professor recorded on zoom, during her course on October 27 and broadcast by Mediapart.

"On the recording, we were quite stunned by her remarks which are an insult on the grounds of religion," said Michel Tubiana, honorary president of the LDH, to AFP. "These remarks amount to pure racism and have nothing to do with freedom of opinion or teaching," supported the CGT FERC Sup of the University. "We did not communicate externally given the security context," following the assassination of Samuel Paty, the president of the institution, Eric Berton, told AFP. But "if the remarks are proven, they will be firmly condemned," he said.

As for the teacher, she specified and insisted that her remarks referred to a religion and not to its believers. As for the expression "RTD that creates controversy, I used it really under the influence of anger," since it was a few days after the assassination of teacher Samuel Paty. "I don’t know if you are aware of the shockwave that this extremely violent assassination has caused among the teaching staff," she said.

However, "There is no transmissible religion by blood, it is a matter of free will and whatever the religion," she explained, stressing that she wanted to address the notion of freedom of conscience with her students.