French secular mission and neo-colonialism: From Egypt to Lebanon
Al-Mayadeen Interview, February 2016
Transcript
00:13May the peace of God be upon you, and His mercy.
00:15It is the oppressive face of one of the agencies for the dissemination of French language and culture,
00:20in the Arab world and particularly in Egypt and Lebanon.
00:24With the French blogger Salah Lamrani, we reveal the secrets of this association,
00:29in the program ‘From the inside”, presented by Zeinab al-Saffar. Stay with us.
00:39According to Pierre Deschamps, the founder of the French secular mission,
00:42education is in fact a means of control and domination over indigenous peoples,
00:47and is even its most effective tool.
00:50Deschamps saw in the institutions dependent on the French secular mission
00:54a vector for the diffusion of this hegemony.
00:56This is what he announced in 1956 when he declared:
01:01“While, through its military strength, the power of its industry and commerce, Europe dominated the world from the material point of view,
01:08it also pursued its spiritual conquest by the propagation of its beliefs, its ideas,
01:13by the diffusion of the discoveries which it realized in the sciences;
01:14Europe had succeeded in directing the universal evolution.
01:17As much as its soldiers and merchants, its missionaries, its professors, its scholars are among the factors of its supremacy. (Pierre Deschamps, The Education of Peoples of Color by Whites Considered from the Masonic Point of View, 1956)
01:24This objective seems to be still in force in some schools of the French secular mission,
01:31but with other methods.
01:33For some time now, at the Franco-Lebanese Lycée Verdun in Beirut, belonging to the French secular mission,
01:40the parents' association has, since the beginning of 2015,
01:44denounced the violence of the school in its behavior with them,
01:52revealing publicly the acts of the French secular mission which disregards the framework of democratic debate
01:59and reaches a level unworthy of a French association responsible for the education of thousands of pupils
02:05throughout the world.
02:07According to the main concerned people, the French Secular Mission uses provocations and threats against parents,
02:13psychological pressures against students and despises Lebanese sovereignty and law.
02:19Salah Lamrani, a Franco-Algerian blogger, researcher and teacher, informs us from the inside about his experience as a professor in one of the schools of the French secular mission in Egypt,
02:32about the defamation lawsuit that the MLF filed against him and on the truth of the affair and its latest developments,
02:39and on the message he addresses to the French youth.
14:38A small pause and we will be back. Don't go too far.
14:49The management of the Franco-Lebanese Lycée Verdun in Beirut, belonging to the network of the French secular mission,
14:56has recently dismissed two pupils from the school
14:59and forbade them to attend classes on the pretext that their parents refused to pay the school fees.
15:04However, the school must abide by Lebanese law, according to which it has no right to make such decisions.
15:10Pupils are protected by Law 515 of 1996 on schools.
15:20Section 10 stipulates that if a dispute arises between the school principal and one of the parents
15:28concerning the application of this law, the school administration is not entitled to take action against his children as a result of the litigation.
23:17I will see you next week, for a new interview with a new guest and a new cause, always from the inside.
23:22Stay in touch in the social network.