PARIS, 12 December 2002 — Although France has had an important Islamic population that goes back to the start of its own history, the French Muslim community will be getting its own Islamic high school — the Ecole Averroes — only next year. Indeed, inscriptions will be taken as of January, and the school will start offering courses come September, at the same time as traditional governmentally-operated French schools.
Named for the celebrated philosopher whose writings on Aristotelian metaphysics had such an enormous impact on the thought of Christian France of the Middle Ages, the school is to open for the 2003-2004 school year next Fall and will occupy a full floor of the building in Lille, France, that has heretofore served as the headquarters of the Ligue Islamique du Nord, the Muslim League of the North.
Makhlouf Mameche, the man who has fought so many years to impose the idea and who will quite appropriately become Ecole Averroes’ first director, says that as far as he’s concerned, an Islamic lycee for France was a dire necessity, a way of telling the French that the country’s Islamic community was capable of establishing its own educational institutions, just as have, for example, French Catholics, who over the years have given France an important educational infrastructure, indeed attracting students from other religions, which is something that Mameche would like to do too.
“Besides offering the identical curriculum offered by traditional French schools of the same educational level,” adds Mameche, “we’ll also provide special instruction in Islamic civilization and religion.”
And just like the Catholics and other religious communities who have officially-recognized schools in France, Mameche says that the Ecole Averroes expects to sign a contract with the French government so that the degrees it offers will be just as legitimate as those proposed by the establishments of other religions.
