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JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Saturday condemned what he called “terrorist” attacks in France, but also warned that President Emmanuel Macron’s comments had “insulted Islam” and “damaged the unity of Muslims. everywhere”.
Conservative Islamic organizations in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, have called for protests and boycotts against France, sharing an image of Macron as a devilish red-eyed snail.
“Freedom of expression that harms noble purity and sacred values and the symbol of religion is so wrong that it should not be justified and should be stopped,” the Indonesian leader, known by his popular name Jokowi, said on a televised program. speak to.
However, he added that “linking religion to acts of terrorism is a huge mistake. Terrorists are terrorists.”
A Tunisian man wielding a knife and shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is the greatest) beheaded a woman and killed two other people in a church in the French city of Nice on Thursday. The attack came less than two weeks after a high school teacher in a Paris suburb was beheaded by an 18-year-old attacker who was apparently outraged by the teacher displaying a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad in class.
Macron has vowed to stand firm against attacks on French values and freedom of belief, but some of his comments before and after recent attacks, including the one calling Islam “a religion in crisis around the world”, have controversial result.
Jokowi did not specify which of Macron’s comments he was referring to in his speech on Saturday.
A spokesman for the Indonesian Foreign Ministry said on Saturday that the ministry had summoned the French ambassador on Tuesday over statements by Macron that he said “insulted Islam” and the fact that he allowed the cartoons to be published.
Tens of thousands of Muslims in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia and the Palestinian territories protested against France on Friday.
(Report by Maikel Jefriando and Fanny Potkin; edited by Jane Wardell)
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