Nice Mayor Faces Backlash Over Unverified Claims of Muslim Prayer in School

A new alleged Muslim prayer in Nice. In a press release titled "Prayers at school: Christian Estrosi met with parents of students", the mayor indicated on November 13 that "three CE2 (3rd grade) students organized a prayer within the premises" of the Pierre-Merle school and claimed that his municipality had summoned their parents "to remind them of the fundamental principles of secularism, which cannot be contested in any way." "In the very constructive exchanges, it clearly appears that the family cells have not demonstrated any willingness to infringe on the principles of secularism," continued the mayor.

It turned out that the three 8-year-old children were not even Muslim and were just playing games to "scare themselves" by "invoking a ghost after seeing a white tarpaulin stuck in the branches of a tree" in the schoolyard, according to the father of one of them. The two other parents summoned gave the same version of the facts. Despite this, Christian Estrosi has not made a public retraction. "So why this extremely ambiguous press release, which does not restore the reality of the facts? Why doesn’t he clearly say that it was not a prayer, but a simple children’s game?" wonders Nice-matin, which claims to have contacted the town hall on Sunday evening, which responded that it was sticking to its press release.

"We had a report of children praying, says Jean-Luc Gagliolo, deputy in charge of Education. The recent repetition of these reports in schools must lead the educational community to be vigilant. All reports must be taken seriously. There is no reason a priori to question the report of child welfare professionals, nor to contest the procedure of meeting with families that we wished to have with the National Education system. Without dramatizing if other reports were to occur, we would maintain this procedure. We remain very attentive to this phenomenon of videos that can circulate on social networks, and influence children."