Philosophy teacher Didier Lemaitre from Trapps in the French department of Yvelines stood up for the rights of Samuel Pati – a schoolteacher who was beheaded by a terrorist last year – and has received life threats ever since. He spoke about this in a conversation with Rasio Sud.
After a Chechen youth dealt with Pati and beheaded him because he was telling schoolchildren about cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, Lemaître wrote an open letter in which he expressed support for republican values and condemned Islamism. According to the teacher, many Muslim students did not understand him and thought that he opposed them.
The families of the students and other members of the city’s Mohammedan community also joined in the condemnation. The mayor of the city Ali Rabe, professing leftist views, accused the teacher of racism and offending the feelings of believers.
Lemaitre began to receive threats on a regular basis and since then goes to college, where he worked for over 20 years, exclusively under the protection of the police. He believes that “the case of the republic in Trapp has failed”: teachers are silent, fearing for their lives, more radical Muslims gain more and more influence, and more moderate ones are persecuted and leave. He talked about his student who does not want to wear the hijab, which is why classmates are extremely hostile towards her.
On the evening of October 16 last year, in the suburbs of Paris, 18-year-old Chechen Abdullah Anzorov killed and beheaded teacher Samuel Pati. The reason for the murder was the demonstration at the Party class of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad – the teacher told the students about freedom of speech. Anzorov was shot dead by the police during his arrest.