Muslims have a right to be angry at France - Dr M

 

Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad has joined the backlash against French President Emmanuel Macron over the latter’s remarks in wake of the killing of a French schoolteacher.

Mahathir said that while he doesn’t condone the killing, Muslims have a right to be angry at France over past grievances with the former colonial power.

However, he also pointed out that many Muslims don’t respond in kind, and France should take cognisance of this.

“Muslims have a right to be angry and to kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past. But by and large, the Muslims have not applied the ‘eye for an eye’ law.

“Muslims don’t. The French shouldn’t. Instead, the French should teach their people to respect other people’s feelings.

“Since you (Macron) have blamed all Muslims and the Muslims’ religion for what was done by one angry person, the Muslims have a right to punish the French. The boycott cannot compensate the wrongs committed by the French all these years,” he said in a blog post today.

High school teacher Samuel Paty was stabbed and beheaded by 18-year-old Muslim Chechen refugee Abdoullakh Abouyedovich Anzorov on Oct 16.

Paty had allegedly shown his students some caricatures of Prophet Muhammad, published by the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in 2015, during a class on the freedom of expression.

Caricatures of the prophet are considered blasphemous by Muslims.

At Paty’s memorial, Macron declared war on “Islamist separatism”, promoting accusations of racism against Islam and the ongoing backlash against him, including calls to boycott French companies.

Earlier today, there was a separate attack and beheading targeting a church in France, while a French embassy guard in Jeddah was reportedly attacked with a “sharp tool”.

The French Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, however, said Macron was not targeting the Muslim community as a whole in his speech but elements of radical Islamism that espouse violence.

“This ideology, built on indoctrination and the creation of a counter-society, thinks it is above the laws of the state.

“It is in this sense that the radical Islamism project can even, in some cases, seek to take control of society.

“The president clearly indicated that he would be intransigent concerning any generalisation, distinguishing the vast majority of French citizens of Muslim faith from the militant and separatist minority who are hostile to the values of the Republic, and who are moreover a burden for the former,” it said.

Four Islamic extremist groups were reported to be responsible for a significant majority of deaths linked to this militant tendency: Isis, Boko Haram, the Taliban, and Al-Qaeda.

Mahathir, meanwhile, described Macron’s remarks as “uncivilised”.

“Macron is not showing that he is civilised. He is very primitive in blaming the religion of Islam and Muslims for the killing of the insulting schoolteacher. It is not in keeping with the teachings of Islam.

“But irrespective of the religion professed, angry people kill. The French in the course of their history killed millions of people. Many were Muslims,” he said. - Mkini