Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad says comments on French attacks have been taken out of context

Former Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohamad stood firm in his widely condemned comments about the attacks by Muslim extremists in France, saying on Friday they were taken out of context and criticizing Twitter and Facebook for removing their posts.

Mahathir, 95, sparked widespread outrage when he blogged Thursday that “Muslims have the right to be angry and kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past.”

Twitter deleted a tweet from Mahathir containing the comment, which it said glorified the violence, and France’s digital minister demanded that the company also ban Mahathir from its platform.

“In fact, I am disgusted with attempts to misrepresent and take out of context what I wrote on my blog,” Mahathir said in a statement.

He said critics did not read his post in its entirety, especially the following sentence which said: “But in general Muslims have not enforced the law of ‘eye for an eye’. Muslims do not. The French should not. Instead , the French should teach their people to respect the feelings of others. “

He said Twitter and Facebook removed the post despite his explanation, calling the move hypocritical.

“On the one hand, they defended those who chose to display offensive cartoons of Prophet Muhammad … and they hope that all Muslims will buy it in the name of freedom of expression,” he said.

“On the other hand, they deliberately removed that Muslims had never sought revenge for injustice against them in the past,” prompting French hatred of Muslims, he added. On Twitter, however, that phrase was not removed. A Mahathir staff member said Facebook removed the entire post.

Facebook Malaysia said in an email that it removed Mahathir’s post for violating its policies. “We do not allow hate speech on Facebook and we strongly condemn any support for violence, death or physical harm,” he said.

Two-time prime minister Mahathir’s comments were in response to calls by Muslim nations to boycott French products after French leader Emmanuel Macron described Islam as a religion “in crisis” and vowed to crack down on it. radicalism after the murder of a French teacher who showed his class a cartoon representing the Prophet Muhammad.

His comments also came when a Tunisian killed three people in a church in Nice, France.

The US ambassador to Malaysia, Kamala Shirin Lakhdir, said on Friday that she “totally disagrees” with Mahathir’s statement.

“Freedom of expression is a right, calling for violence is not,” he said in a short statement.

Australia’s High Commissioner in Malaysia, Andrew Goledzinowski, wrote that while Mahathir was not advocating actual violence, “in the current climate, words can have consequences.”

Mahathir’s second term as prime minister lasted from 2018 until he resigned in February 2020. He has been seen as a defender of moderate Islamic views and a spokesperson for the interests of developing countries. At the same time, he deliberately criticized Western society and nations and their relations with the Muslim world, while he himself was denounced in Israel and elsewhere for making anti-Semitic comments.

– AP