The girl who lied
Domino effect.
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A middle school teacher was beheaded in France last year after he showed his students the infamous Charlie Hebdo magazine Muhammad cartoons.
But now, the Muslim schoolgirl whose charges of discrimination sparked the campaign of outrage aimed at the late Samuel Paty admits she fabricated her version of events. She was not even in class on the day the 47-year-old teacher presented the controversial drawings during a civics lesson on freedom of expression and blasphemy.
The 13-year-old schoolgirl, who has not been identified, claimed Paty made her and the other Muslim students stand in the hallway so he could show the rest of the class “a photograph of the Prophet naked.” She claimed she confronted Paty later about being excluded from the lesson. For this, she said, she was suspended for two days. Her story enraged her father, who then launched a campaign against Paty, accusing the teacher of Islamophobia, blasphemy, and discrimination.
It was all based on a lie. The girl fabricated her story because she didn’t want to admit to her father that she had been suspended for skipping class, not confronting alleged Islamophobia.
And now, a man is dead.
“The 13-year-old pupil, whose father started a hate campaign against Samuel Paty by filing a legal complaint, says she lied to please her father, and she was not even at the class in which the teacher was alleged to have shown a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad,” the Independent reports.
The girl’s charges against Paty had a domino effect, leading to death threats and outrage in the local Muslim community.
The sordid episode came to a tragic, bloody conclusion on Oct. 16, 2020, when an 18-year-old zealot, Abdullakh Anzorov, decapitated Paty with a butcher’s knife. Anzorov was shot and killed later by responding police officers.
“She lied because she felt trapped in a spiral because her classmates had asked her to be a spokesperson,” says the girl’s attorney, who confirmed she was not in class on the day the murdered teacher discussed freedom of expression and Charlie Hebdo’s intentionally provocative depictions of Muhammad.
Sure, that’s one way to spin it. But the simple fact of the matter is that she lied because she didn’t want her father to know she had been suspended for skipping class, according to the French daily newspaper Le Parisien.
“She would not have dared to confess to her father the real reasons for her exclusion shortly before the tragedy, which was in fact linked to her bad behaviour,” Le Parisien reports.
The girl has since been charged with slander. Meanwhile, her father and an Islamist preacher have been charged with "complicity in murder."
The girl’s attorney, who argues his client should be exempt from the slander charges, blames the father for “excessive and disproportionate behavior.”
All this because a child didn’t want to admit she is a lousy student.