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Following the Nice attack, former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said in a tweet on Thursday that Muslims have the right to “kill millions of Frenchmen,” sparking a wave of widespread anger that prompted Twitter to remove the publication.
Following the Nice attack, former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said in a tweet Thursday that Muslims have the right to “kill millions of Frenchmen,” sparking a wave of widespread anger that prompted Twitter to remove the publication.
Three people were killed in a church in the city in southern France, where the attacker massacred at least one of them, in an attack that the French authorities treat as a “terrorist.”
Shortly after the attack, Mahathir Mohamad, who was prime minister until his government collapsed in February, released a series of unusual angry tweets.
Referring to the murder of a French professor who was beheaded in a Paris suburb after showing his students cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, he said he does not condone this attack, but that freedom of expression does not include “insulting other people.”
Mahathir, 95, who had previously generated controversy through statements attacking Jews and gays, added that “no matter what religion they profess, angry people are killed.”
“The French have killed millions of people throughout their history. Many of them were Muslims. Muslims have the right to be angry and kill millions of French in response to the massacres of the past,” he said.
But he added: “In general, Muslims have not enforced the ‘tit-for-tat’ law. Muslims don’t do that and the French shouldn’t either.”
Mahathir, who has served as Malaysian prime minister twice in a total of 24 years, said French President Emmanuel Macron “does not appear to be civilized”, adding that he is “very primitive.”
He added: “The French must teach their people to respect the feelings of others. Since you have held all Muslims and their religion responsible for what an angry person did, Muslims have the right to punish the French. The boycott it cannot make up for the mistakes that the French made all these years. “
His statements did not directly refer to the Nice attack, but the posts drew widespread condemnation and were described by social media users as “shameful” and “flawed.”
Initially, Twitter tagged Mahathir’s tweet about “killing millions of French people” to warn that he was “glorifying violence” but did not delete it. Except he removed it completely after a short time.
The assassination of the teacher, Samuel Bate, led the French president to commit himself to confront Islamic extremist currents. But the move raised the level of tension and sparked an argument between Paris and Ankara, at a time when anti-French protests broke out in many Muslim countries, amid calls to boycott French products.
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