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MONTREAL – The criticism Djemila Benhabib leveled against a private Muslim school during a 2012 radio interview was harsh. The school was providing small children indoctrination worthy of a military camp in Afghanistan, she said. It was grooming “fundamental activists.” It offered as a model a society “where men are probably going to commit honour crimes against their sisters.”

But in what her lawyer called an important victory for free speech, a judge cleared Benhabib of slander Tuesday, ruling her comments were neither erroneous nor made in bad faith.

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“Certainly, these remarks are severe and could have been hurtful,” Superior Court Justice Carole Hallée wrote. “However they have a place in a democratic society like ours.”

Benhabib, an author and outspoken critic of Islamic fundamentalism, had begun looking into the Muslim School of Montreal after seeing a brochure in which the female students all wore hijabs. She learned on the school’s web site that children were memorizing Qur’anic passages that spoke of beautiful virgins awaiting male believers in the afterlife, while non-believers endured the fires of hell.