French President Emmanuel Macron has given mouth shutting reply to Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan who accused Macron of “attacking Islam” and creating polarisation in society.
Earlier, Imran Khan wrote a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg seeking a ban on Islamophobic content on the social media platform. Mr. Khan criticised Macron for his remarks on the beheading of a teacher near Paris last week.
The French teacher was beheaded by an Islamist radical for showing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in the class. Macron had called the incident an “Islamist attack” and urged citizens to stand up against extremism. “One of our compatriots was murdered today because he taught … the freedom of expression, the freedom to believe or not believe,” he had said. Macron also said that the “Islamists want our future”, according to AFP.
The murder triggered massive outrage in France and drew condemnation from political parties and President Macron, who called the crime an “Islamist terrorist attack”. Mr Macron said, “Islam is a religion that is in crisis all over the world today, we are not just seeing this in our country”.
Following Macron’s comments, #BoycottFrenchGoods began trending on social media. Middle East countries have also called for a boycotting of French products. Macron, while condemning the brutal attack, said that “France will not give up cartoons”. He also said that Paty was “killed because Islamists want our future”.
Many people from Middle-East countries took to Twitter to call out the islamophobia, as well as the boycotting of French products.
“We will not give in, ever. We respect all differences in a spirit of peace. We do not accept hate speech and defend reasonable debate. We will always be on the side of human dignity and universal values,” Macron tweeted, responding to the calls of boycott and condemnation from Islamic states.
