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France says it will continue the fight against Islamic extremism.
REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, by Mabruroh, Fergi Nadira, Alkhaledi Kurnialam
France insists that they will not give up on attempts to intimidate Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. France said it will continue its fight against Islamic extremism and will not give in to destabilization and intimidation.
“France will never abandon its principles and values,” a French government spokesman, Gabriel Attal, was quoted as saying. Arab news, Thursday (10/28).
On Saturday, Turkey’s leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on his citizens to stop buying French products on Monday. This impulse is the latest expression of anger in the Muslim world at the resurgence of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in the French media.
Erdogan, who has a history of bad relations with French President Emmanuel Macron, said France was pursuing an anti-Islam agenda. “I ask all my citizens here never to help French brands or buy them,” he said.
Before declaring a boycott of French products, Erdogan had questioned Macron’s mental health. He encouraged Paris to summon its ambassador to Ankara.
“What is this man named Macron’s problem with Muslims and Islam? Macron needs treatment at the mental level, “Erdogan said in a speech on Saturday.
Erdogan’s ire was sparked by Macron’s earlier comments alleging radical Islam fosters “separatism” in France. Macron’s comments came after the beheading of a history teacher, Samuel Paty, as he returned home from teaching.
Paty has previously shown cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad to students that she teaches as a Free Speech subject. The murder of an 18-year-old teenager sparked outrage in France.
After Paty’s assassination, Macron showed a strong defense of the French secularist tradition. Macron vowed to crack down on Islamic radicalism by closing mosques suspected of promoting extremist ideas.
Macron described Islam as a religion “in crisis” around the world. Dan said the government would introduce a bill in December to strengthen the 1905 Act that officially separated church and state in France.
France also withdrew its envoy from its ambassador to Turkey on Saturday last week. The dispute is based not only on the comments of Macron or Erdogan, but also in response to their various problems, including maritime rights in the eastern Mediterranean, Libya, Syria and the escalation of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.
“President Erdogan’s comments are unacceptable. Merits and rudeness are not methods. We demand that Erdogan change the course of his policy because he is dangerous in every way,” said a French official. France24, Sunday (10/25).
The head of an organization representing Muslim clerics in France also rejected Erdogan’s attack on Macron on Tuesday. He also criticized Erdogan’s calls to boycott French products.
“It is a pity, the president of Turkey does not represent Muslims, nor the Muslim world,” explained the president of the Conference of Imams of France, Imam Hassen Chalghoumi in an interview with his bulletin on Tuesday (10/28).
Chalghoumi also regretted that Erdogan had political disputes with many countries in the region such as Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt. Chalghoumi also criticized Erdogan’s allegations made in a speech on Monday in which he claimed that Muslims in Europe are now being targeted in a lynching campaign similar to the treatment of Jews before World War II.
“In France, Muslims have the same freedoms and enjoy the same rights as all their citizens. There are 2,500 Muslim places of worship. Republican law allows everyone to exercise their faith freely, “he said.
Instead, the priest asked French Muslims to support Macron. “Let’s be strong together,” he urged.
In Indonesia, the French Embassy assessed that a series of comments written on social networks deviated from the position defended by France in favor of freedom of expression, freedom of religion and the rejection of calls to hatred. These comments turned the comments Macron made at the national tribute to Samuel Paty into a tool for political purposes.
“Although the statement aims to invite to combat radical Islamism (radicalism) and the resistance is carried out alongside French Muslims, who are an integral part of society, history and the French Republic,” wrote the official statement from the French Embassy through its official Facebook page, Tuesday (10/27).
The French embassy emphasized that Macron’s target against separatism was only radical Islamic groups. All democracies, especially France and Indonesia, fight against radical Islam, which is the cause of terrorist attacks on their territories.
“President Emmanuel Macron made it clear that there was no intention to generalize and clearly distinguish between the majority of French Muslims and a militant and separatist minority that is hostile to the values of the French Republic,” the statement read.
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