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PETALING JAYA: Australia’s top diplomat in Malaysia has expressed great concern over former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s response to the “boycott of French goods” movement promoted by Muslims in many countries.
High Commissioner Andrew Goledzinowski said he was “deeply disturbed” by what Mahathir had written on his blog today.
“Although the former prime minister has not and will not defend actual violence, in the current climate, words can have consequences,” he said in a tweet.
Earlier today, Mahathir defended calls for Muslims to boycott French products in response to comments on Islam made by French President Emmanuel Macron.
In a series of tweets, repeating what he had written on his blog, Mahathir said that Macron was “very primitive” for blaming Islam and Muslims for the recent beheading of a teacher, arguing that the murder was not in line with the teachings. Islamic.
“Regardless of your religion, angry people kill. The French throughout their history have killed millions of people. Many were Muslims, ”he said in a tweet.
This was followed by the tweet that was marked, which read: “Muslims have the right to be angry and kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past.
Twitter had initially flagged the controversial tweet because it was seen as “glorifying violence.”
“However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest to keep the tweet accessible,” he said, adding that the controversial post would not be allowed to retweet.
However, shortly after, the tweet was completely removed.
Macron’s comments last week came in response to the beheading of a teacher, Samuel Paty, outside his school in a suburb outside Paris earlier this month, after he showed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad during a class. who directed on freedom of expression.
The teacher became the target of an online hate campaign for his choice of lesson material – the same images that sparked a bloody assault by Islamist gunmen at the office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the original editor, in January 2015.
